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Problem, Adult Solution, Cheater Solution

So yesterday Chris came up with this great shorthand about how cheaters react to adult problems in selfish ways. His example:

PROBLEM: My wife and I argue often, mostly over financial matters.
ADULT SOLUTION: From now on, we’re going to keep a closer eye on our finances, cutting costs where we can. We’re also going to work to improve our lines of communication, particularly where financial matters are concerned.
CHEATER SOLUTION: I’m gonna go fuck a 20-year-old.

This prompted several chumps to pen their own little problem/cheater solutions. So today I’m inviting you to do the same.

I think it’s a great exercise for several reasons. A) It’s making fun of the absurdity of cheaters. Always fun. And B) It’s a good way to remind yourself that these people have CHOICES. That you didn’t drive them to cheat. There were grown-up ways of addressing real marital issues or their lives’ dissatisfactions and they chose infidelity. Good way to rewire your brain to think about this.

So have at it — problem? Adult solution? Cheater solution?

Thanks Chris!

Ask Chump Lady

Got a question for the Chump Lady? Or a submission for the Universal Bullshit Translator? Write to me at [email protected]. Read more about submission guidelines.
  • Oh pick me, pick me!
    Problem – Feel like my wife doesn’t spend enough time with me – she works during the day (so she can’t go drinking with me) – She won’t take vacation time -(not to go anywhere but to go drinking with me) – She is always on her Ipad or Kindle – ( nothing to do with the fact that I’m falling down drunk by the time she gets off of work)
    – Adult solution: Honey, I’d like for us to spend more time together. Let’s go on vacation, I have an idea of what we could do. I’d like for you to leave the electronic devices at home and just spend time together. OK, I’ll leave the alcohol at home too.
    – His solution – I’m just going to go fuck the bait / bar Ho at the local fish camp – she’ll get drunk with me

    • I’m am on your exact page. That was my life. Hated living with a drunk. We are so better off without that cheap in our lives.

    • OMG!! When I first started to read this I had to do a double take. I thought I WROTE IT! Lol!! Ex was EXACTLY the same and did the same. Ugh….

    • that is almost my story too.

      Problem: whining about me not being any fun cuz i didnt want to go out to HIS family and friends and go drinking (after 1.6 months of my daughters death), — telling me i got boring (because i was stressing over not paying the bills, broken down house, yard and vehicles, and over little things like the porn and dating sites he got on. OH and because i never wanted to go anywhere, even thou i would make suggestions like the park with the kids, a movie with the kids, out of town with the kids) — blaming me for being mad because he wasnt coming home and was out drinking at only God knows where cuz the story he told me wasnt true, for not treating him right but never treated me right, never answered my calls or texts, never came me money to pay the bills and didnt remember what he spent his paycheck on but he was broke on monday, and EVERYTHING bad that happened to him was my fault.
      Adult solution: sit down and talk to your wife, tell her how you are feeling and why. come up with a solution to spend more time together and how to pay the bills, and be a little understanding when your wife tells you that she doesnt like drinking, or parties and is still damaged, stay off the porn and dating sites, apologize for being an asshole and comprise to make the 14 year marriage work. OH and appreciate everything your wife is able to do, has been doing for 14 years and still doing to keep the family together and go to marriage counseling and AA like wife suggested after you got kicked out of the house.
      Cheater solution — stay out more nights drinking and not come home, continue to lie about whereabouts and money, Believe his enablers who tell him he has a bad wife and finally move in with the married HOOD RAT who doesnt even take care of her own kids — after all she has zero responsiblites, no house, no job, no kids, no car but she does get drunk and party with him. OH!! and let your HOOD RAT call your wife and tell her off, as well as call your movie rental place and say she is your wife to b*tch them out for a late movie.

  • Problem: My husband and I are growing apart. Time spent together is limited; he chooses to have his free time in the day and have “meetings” and do paperwork at night closed up in home office. Ceases to parent our child. Has more and more “meetings” away from the house in evenings and night, often coming home after several drinks.
    Adult Solution: Talk it through, be honest, seek counseling. Spend quality time together alone and with our daughter – give the relationship effort. If it doesn’t work – it’s not reconcilable – be big about it. Negotiate a divorce and part as reasonably as possible.
    Cheater solution: Spend as much time away from your wife and family as possible. Befriend every woman with a “problem” – sometimes for years – drink heavily, accuse your wife of being “negative and resentful” and “suspicious” as you lie to her daily about actions and whereabouts. FInally break up the marriage of mutual friends so he can be with the “love of his life for 36 years”. Lie to your wife for 6 months after the affair is discovered as to the sexual nature of the relationship – then refuse to negotiate a divorce settlement for years stating “what’s your hurry?”

    • “drink heavily, accuse your wife of being “negative and resentful” and “suspicious” as you lie to her daily about actions and whereabouts.”

      THIS!!

      • OH!! yes yes, me too. he actually told me that if i was going to be suspicious and blame him for doing it (cheating) then might as well do it if he was going to be blamed anyway

  • PROBLEM: My wife wanted a Lazy Boy chair because the couch was, for her, very uncomfortable. So, for Christmas, I bought her the chair, and I surprised her with it. Now, she sits in it a lot and I’d rather her sit by me.
    ADULT SOLUTION: I miss having her next to me when we watch TV, so I will suggest that we get a Lazy Boy couch. But first, I’m going to actually tell her that this is bothering me.
    CHEATER SOLUTION: I’m gonna fuck my co-worker. And I’m not going to tell her that I dislike that she sits in the chair (that I gifted her with) unless she catches me cheating.

  • Problem: Husband/Wife has feelings for another person.
    Adult Answer: Realize that this sometimes happens. Sit down together and discuss in a rational manner what to do. It might be painful, but not as painful as cheating. Communicate any and all feelings on the subject, and reach a conclusion that is best for both parties with complete HONESTY. This isn’t fun, but it need not be life-shattering and doesn’t need to rip apart the family.

    Cheater Answer: Well, this is bigger than the both of us, the heart wants what it wants right? OTHER affairs are wrong, but this one is special because it was True Love! So kindly leave so my schmoopie can move in. The kids will just love their NEW mom/dad. You’d probably like her/him if you got to know her/him…

  • Problem: Turning 63 years old, conflicted relationship w/ 24 year old daughter, dead end job, no longer winning at favorite sport.
    Adult solution: Find other stuff to do, validate daughter’s struggle, look forward to retirement.
    Cheater’s solution: Fuck a 29 year old.

  • Problem: wife calls husband stupid 1 time while drunk at a party, then tells husband her opinion on a light fixture he installed that she doesn’t like, then forgets to remind him he would like to have a glass of wine on their vacation to do Disneyland (note, each thing only occurred 1 time each) while all the while growing more distant from wife who tends to be upset that I am ignoring her
    Adult solution: discuss feelings after each incident to ensure wife knows how sensitive I am. Understand she is allowed to have her opinions on things, realize I am a grown man who should not need reminders about drinking and realize that the only reason she is truly upset is because of the silent treatment
    Cheater solution: volunteer for a one year deployment in Saudi Arabia, refuse marital counseling at all, live a double life for at least six months and then the moment wife begins to feel safe and secure again tell her to get health insurance because you want a divorce….over the phone. Then proceed to ask her for $10,000 cash to fund the setup of your new life while racking up $20k in ccards bills while you are busy making sure she knows she is 100% to blame for the demise of the marriage and explaining to others just how “abusive” she is while dragging your feet in settling the divorce because what if I come out of the fog….

    • Oh Ashley, You were not his partner you were his parent.
      Remind him HE wants to have a glass of wine. And to tell him your opinion on something he installed because you happen to have an opinion that differs from his. OMG seriously. NO No don’t be negative don’t I just deserve your unrestrained praise and a BIG gold star for my effort.
      Ashley did you feel as though you had to have your ever decision cleared by him?

      • Not until the last 6 months or so….because he was the silent treatment guy and used depression and ptsd from his past deployments as an excuse, I blamed everything on that. It wasn’t until the bomb drop of a phone call that he informed me of all of this. Now I know that PTSD and depression don’t make you lie, cheat etc but then I was in such denial.
        I always asked him about everything just to make sure he was okay but didn’t realize then it was because I was afraid of doing something wrong. Now since I’m out I see how much I tried to do the pick me dance…even before the OW entered the pic.
        It was all just justification for his poor behavior

    • Ashley see, what you did call him at the party was true…:)

      Really rotten! What is it with military guys saying get medical insurance, what kind of thinking is that. I heard oh you just want to be married to me for the medical.

      So pissed for you Ashley, I hope you are doing better now.

  • Problem: My wife works 60 miles away from home, is tired when she gets home and I feel like she just doesn’t love me; actually I’m not sure that she ever did. Plus both of our companies have been sold; there is a lot of stress and there is one woman at work that is really into me. She keeps chasing me even though she knows I’m married and she’s married too!
    Adult Solution: Sit down and communicate my feelings to my wife. Tell her that I feel like our communication has gotten awful. We need to spend more time together; we need to be more intimate so I can feel closer to her. I have to let her know that I need to feel more important in her life. Maybe I should hire a cleaning service so she can have more free time when she’s at home.
    Cheater solution: I’ll just fuck my ho-worker and make long term plans with her. She is really into me. I know that because she’s willing to throw her whole marriage away and lie to her husband just so she can be with me!

  • PROBLEM: My wife and I are hardly communicating these days and we fight a lot. I can’t work for anyone and have been living off her assets for years, which apparently now are all used up. She’s hocking her jewelry and other possessions so we can buy groceries and she gets angry when I ask her for beer and cigarette money. I go out every night just so that we don’t fight.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Find employment and help to support your family. Understand that your wife would naturally be upset knowing there is no way to pay rent or the electricity bill. Stay home with your wife a few times a week, better yet, take her out, she’s lonely and alone.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: I’m going to fuck these girls at the bar who think I’m amazing, witty, and funny.

    • Love that solution… how approproate for the “amaxing, witty and funny”

  • PROBLEM: It’s tough working a full-time job. Babies are are a lot of work, too. And so is owning a house.
    ADULT SOLUTION: Sharing the work with your wife, toward team goals (aka children and house). Accept that life isn’t fun all the time, but decide to have a positive attitude. By sharing the work, there will be more time for fun as a couple.
    CHEATER SOLUTION: Leave wife to do all the heavy-lifting. When at home, yell and binge on video games, movies, sports, and texting. Stay out all night. Drink, gamble, fuck other people.

  • PROBLEM: My wife went through cancer treatments and a hysterectomy for endometriosis. She wasn’t as into sex during this time, and she turned me down when we went to bed late at night saying she was tired. Plus, she’s always taking care of the kids and doesn’t go with me to horse shows, and hasn’t learned to ride horses like I wish she would.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Try to be understanding about what my wife is going through. Talk to her about other ways we might be intimate that would help me feel close to her. Listen to my wife’s suggestions that she’d like to learn to trail ride and get her a nice, quiet horse that she could enjoy riding with me. Understand that my wife is a separate person who has different needs and interests than mine, and support her dreams too.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Have an affair with my married coworker who already loves horses. Plot to break up her family. Move closer to her so I can start working on her kids by getting them to think of me as their “Uncle.”

  • Oo! Thought of another one.

    PROBLEM: Spouse goes out with friends almost every night of the week, never asks if you want to join them, and always seems to already have plans with friends whenever you want to go out.

    Adult Answer: Tell them you want to be included. They might not be aware how much you feel left out. This doesn’t mean they need your express permission to see friends, it just means that they should consider your feelings and perhaps set aside time for you two so they can balance friends and the relationship. This is a fixable problem.

    Cheater Answer: Well, my spouse ignores me, and doesn’t think about MY needs, so I’ll just go fuck that guy/girl I met at work. Why should I bother trying to talk to my husband/wife? They’re cold. My lover at work UNDERSTANDS me, and the marriage has been drifting anyway, I just needed someone to listen to me, and it just kinda HAPPENED y’know? If my spouse actually cared, this wouldn’t have happened. They just don’t know how to deal with my needs. *Mememememememememe…*

  • I have sleep apnea, snore like an infuriated badger, and stop breathing for up to 45 seconds at a stretch many times a night. This causes my wife to wake from a sound sleep in panic and elbow me to make me roll upon my side and catch my breath. Sleep studies indicate that I have apnea episodes 300 times a night. But what the fuck do doctors know? I have a CPAP but stubbornly won’t wear it ‘cuz I don’t like it. I crash in my recliner at about 6:30 PM and doze through reruns of MASH and John Wayne while snoring softly and drooling out the corner of my mouth. The apnea also causes intermittent erectile dysfunction which I secretly blame on my wife for not being “hot” enough. After months of begging me to explore other options, or get one of the newer quieter CPAPS, my wife not only moved out the bed, she moved to the downstairs sofa so she won’t be sleep deprived. Her behavior makes me feel unloved and undesirable.

    Adult Solution: Listen to my wife’s legitimate concerns about my health and her need for sleep; explore other options until I find something that works well enough for her to move back into the bed… where she would really like to be…as she has explained to me many, many times.

    Cheater Solution: Indulge in self-pity because my wife is a controlling hard-ass. Have an affair with married ho-worker who “understands” me. After all, “Hot-Twat-Dot” apparently gets all the sleep she needs at night and is therefore rested, ready, and willing to do ALL the work at the flick of the zipper!

    • He “Snores like an infuriated badger” . . .I can’t stop laughing at your description. Are you sure you want to be in that bed?
      He crashes on the couch with “drool coming out of the side of his mouth”. Why don’t you let “the married ho-worker who understands him” have him. What a catch!

      • Dana,

        We’ve been divorced for several years. And I’m at Meh.

        Apparently “Dot” decided she didn’t want him either…perhaps she actually slept in the bed with him for a night? 😉

      • BTDT with the sleep apnea. Caused all sorts of problems and I was the big mean person that kept pointing it all out.

        • Kit,

          Why they are to hypersensitive and weird about this beats me. But they take it fucking personally!!

          They don’t get all shamed and freaked when they have other chronic problems requiring treatment. Go figure?

          Other than the known health risks, there is growing evidence that apnea can affect our sex lives.

          http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/really-the-claim-sleep-apnea-causes-sexual-problems/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

          [Even hearing THAT wouldn’t persuade, “Stone Head” to take better care of his problem. That man snored and snorted so loudly that even ear plugs didn’t help.]

          I suspect apnea can cause depression as well. How can you NOT be depressed when you have chronic 24/7 fatigue?

          Stubborn people suck!!

          • Notice how, when it’s something serious like sleep apnea or gambling addiction, and you try to tell them they need help, it gets spat in your face or ignored and it’s all “I’m fine! I don’t need you to tell me how to take care of myself!”

            But when they get caught cheating, it’s all “I have a proooooobleeeeeeemmmm, I need heeeeeelp! Why won’t you supppoooooort me? Don’t you know I’m siiiiiick!?”

            Gee, and I thought they were all “fine.”

            • I’m a nagging bitch too.
              There is a serious problem here I know you got mugged by you took 5 weeks off work and now you have only returned to work on light duties and it has been months. STBX ‘ Im trying I really am it hard to explain, but you could be more understanding. You need to go and see someone there is a serious problem here, ” no I’m fine just have a lot on my mind re work”. code “they know I hooked up while on my way back from a business meeting and as a result got bashed” They are now looking for a way to terminate me as a coworker that I made an inappropriate remark to has also reported me for harassment.
              Three days after returning to full duties he was walked and I had no idea why till after Dday just over two years later.

        • My stbx has it too ! The heavier he got – the worse it became. It was diagnosed and of course, he will never do anything about it. Ad that to the sound of a broken chain saw when he snores, sweats like a fountain and you’ve got one sexy bed partner – NOT.
          Oh…I forgot the mouth breathing. Hmm…..

    • Oh God this reminds me that I absolutely do NOT miss my ex snoring like a pneumatic drill next to me after a night on the town and drooling like a baby!

    • Sleep deprivation is the worst! A person can hardly function when they’re not getting the right amount of sleep, not to mention the illnesses it can cause. I seriously believe not being able to sleep for several years when my kids were sick with asthma contributed to my getting cancer.

      Who cares if you got any sleep, right? It was all about him. And to think that your ex wouldn’t address the problem, and believed all doctors were jerks…no one is the boss of him! I love that explanation by CL about so many cheaters…my ex definitely had a “you’re not the boss” mentality, especially with me.

      • Since I retired in 2012 and can get 9 good hours a night and/or naps, I have much more patience and stressors don’t get to me much. Sleep is restorative and healing.

        [ It could also be because I don’t live with a PA man. 😉 ]

        Studies show that Americans are among the most sleep deprived people in the world. It is a national problem.

        • I notice I feel better than I can ever remember, and the biggest difference I see is that I’m getting more sleep than I ever have. I was lucky to get 3-4 of hours of sleep when the kids were little because of their asthma/illnesses. This is a period of time that my ex seemed to find every excuse possible to travel for his work or hobbies. Staying home with sick kids wasn’t fun! It’s also when I found a love note from “a student with a crush” in his pocket, and got strange phone calls asking if I knew where my husband really was. Whenever I really needed my ex during times of emotional distress, he disappeared. So glad to live in town where I’m not as isolated and have friends who provide reciprocal relationships now.

          • Isn’t sleep wonderful? STBX had sleep apnea, and notyou that was me you were describing waking up multiple times a night when he stopped breathing. He would fall asleep on the lazyboy at 6.30, always said that there wasn’t a problem, he was just tired from work. Which of course left me doing all the chores, running the kids around, supervising homework, cooking, cleaning, visiting my mum, as he slept and snored in front of the tv. When the kids were small he never got up to help out, and I went for years on an average of four hours of sleep a night between the the boys and the sleep apnea. (But it was my fault that we had such a lousy sex life, don’t you know….)

            When he finally went to get checked out, he was given a cpap machine that he used once because it was “so uncomfortable” and because he couldn’t hear himself snoring and denied there was a problem. He took the machine back the next day and the technician called later that week begging me to get him to use it, as he apparently had the worst case of sleep apnea the lab had ever seen. Me not being the boss of him, you know how that went.

            Now that I have a new bed and no snoring, sweating cheater hogging it I sleep like a baby most nights, and am more rested than I have been in years. Another reason not to ever, ever go back. I expect some drama to erupt shortly, though, as OW has finally left him. Probably got tired of the snoring.

            • And you know what? The failure to do anything about sleep apnea is really childish.

              Both my brothers and one of my sisters-in-law have sleep apnea. There was no question about not doing anything about it. Of course they did something about it!

              But that’s being adult. 😉

              • It is childish, isn’t it? It becomes clearer and clearer to me that I married a man-child, not a man. I pray that I will be completely free of him this year, no longer cast as the bully and the Mother who needs to be defied at every turn, even if it makes no sense to do so and even if it results in severe (but preventable) health consequences.

                Thank Goddess for no contact, for this place, for the loving adults that surround me now. It really was the best possible thing to happen to me, him leaving, although it didn’t seem like it at the time. He can be free now to live as he likes, alone, with no one the boss of him, ever.

                Remember the theme song for the tv show “Malcolm in the Middle”? Sums it up, I think –

  • Ooo, I’ll play!!!

    PROBLEM: My wife just can’t seem to forgive my three year gambling addiction. I feel unloved and unwanted in my own home.

    ADULT SOLUTION: I will acknowledge the pain and loss of trust she experienced because I lied to her, acknowledge the anxiety she experienced because she couldn’t pay the bills or buy shoes for the children, get myself into counselling for my addiction and marriage counselling to rebuild her trust and love for me.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: I will continue gambling and then lie, minimise and deceive her for two years. When she finally threatens to leave me, I will blame her for my gambling problem and call her a bitch for not being more supportive and sympathetic of my addiction. When she gets the phone number for the gambling helpline I will then refuse to get counselling and deny outright that I have an addiction. Whenever she raises it after that, I will insult her, shout at her, throw things at her and accuse her of trying to destroy our marriage until she backs down.

    When I start an affair some years later, I will blame her for never voicing her feelings, arguing about things or trying to address issues in our marriage. I will conveniently forget all the arguments about gambling.

  • PROBLEM: Husband and wife have poor relationship and don’t have sex often. Wife does all household and child rearing responsibilities. Husband goes to work, comes home, and expects sex constantly.
    ADULT SOLUTION: Sit down and talk about why wife won’t have sex. Discuss issues such as abuse and neglect and respond accordingly. Acknowledge this and possibly go to therapy to get help.
    CHEATER SOLUTION: Constantly lie, manipulate, and cheat on wife. Bang strange pussy in the woods. Then tell wife it is ALL her fault, and that she is being UNREASONABLE when she gets upset about discovery of said affairs.

    • OK, that one made me laugh. One thing that’s making me feel better is how often cheater accuses spouse of causing THEIR problems.

      • Yeah, the look of shock and then laughter from people when I tell them the “Unreasonable” line is always funny. Everyone from family, friends, delivery guy, and doc have heard it and bust out laughing. It’s my fav of the crazy! 🙂

    • Freeatlast, I should copy and paste your response. My life exactly. I will just add that he says, “Why can’t you just get over it already”.

  • PROBLEM: Wife struggles professionally and in personal life as she enters middle age. Feels frustrated that she is not meeting the high expectations created for her as a clever teenager by semi-literate, hopeful parents, expectations she bought into eagerly and deeply. She is forced out of the business she helped create, and the business she starts on her own is stillborn. Wife sees the bloom of youth fading. The children outgrow the cute phase, begin to establish their own identities, and start having fairly ordinary teenage problems of their own (obesity, laziness, defiance, etc.). Because Wife sees the children as extensions of herself, their imperfections fills her with anxiety exacerbate her creeping sense of underachievement and failure.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Get some therapy, individual and family. Realize that there is more to you than your business and your figure your kids. Take pride in *actual* achievements, even if they are not the Stuff of Legend (e.g., being the first in your family to finish college, maintaining a long marriage, raising healthy kids, having a nice home, etc.). Set boundaries with kids and enforce them (e.g., homework before HULU, frozen pizza at 10 p.m. only if you ate the green beans at dinner). Focus on fitness and good health instead of the pertness of youth, celebrate the end of young adult obligations (No more diapers to change or ear infections to treat!), and relax into the satisfactions of middle age (e.g., knowing how the world works, having money to travel, etc.). Objectively assess professional strengths and weaknesses and find a position that is a good fit (e.g., people with a lifelong tendency to procrastinate shouldn’t work for themselves). Spend time with your spouse, who may strike you as dorky and uptight but who makes conspicuous efforts to show that he is charmed by you and wants a life of contentment together.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Abandon real life and escape into online video games. Disregard even minimal actual obligations (e.g., opening the mail, going to bed before 4 a.m., bathing) to focus on virtual achievements. Spend thousands of hours day and night earning the highest levels possible for your characters in the World of Warcraft. Develop an online persona of a Magical Cougar Princess and post dozens of times a day on Warcraft websites, engaging in the juvenile sexual banter that predominates there, sometimes with boys young enough to be your sons’ friends. Begin drinking a bottle of wine by yourself while you play through the night. Arrange hook-ups with other gamers much younger than you, including your mighty Guild Leader, who then favors you with extra praise and rewards in your online fantasy life. With him become the Power Couple of Azeroth, the Brangelina of Pandaria. Confuse yourself with your pixelated avatar. Hide all of this from your husband. When Husband expresses concerns about how distant you’ve become and ultimately objects to your priorities, accuse him of not supporting you, not wanting you to have any fun, of trying to control you. Tell him you’ve done some research and you’re pretty sure he has Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder and give him articles from the Internet about his problems. Briefly express concern for his illness and wish him well in sorting it out before logging back on to WoW. Stiff arm Husband’s suggestion of marriage counseling, and when he makes the appointments and drags you, lie to the therapist about virtually all of your choices and all of your motives. When your affairs are discovered, and your husband pushes for reconciliation, continue to cheat and lie. When Husband finally has enough and files for divorce, blame him for everything you can think of, especially when talking to the children whose lives you napalmed with your choices. If they won’t play along, bribe the children with expensive electronics. Marry one of your affair partners from your Fantasy Realm and get to work ruining the lives of his kids, whose family was destroyed by divorce so he could marry you.

    • Nomar – for all its wonders, the internet has assisted so many to their own ruin! I forgot to say in mine : “develop an online gaming addiction to replace gambling addiction. Stay shut in a dark study around the clock for three years until your five year old son develops an obsessive interest in learning how to play ‘the game’ so he can be just like dad when he grows up. Blame your wife for this addiction as well”.

      • There’s a lovely choice: gambling addiction or gaming addiction. I’m guessing the gambling addiction is the quicker path to financial ruin but the gaming addiction takes more time.

        Given that “time is the money of love,” they’re both losing propositions.

    • Wow.Wow.Wow. Nomar. These narcissists are unbelievable!!

      PROBLEM: “I’m a spoiled rotten brat and get everything I want. I’m 60 years old and decide that my wife and I need to go into debt for a Harley Davidson motorcycle like all my drinking buddies have. I bought two cool leather biker vests and got some doo rags made. I look so damn hot in these. In the mornings I have a hard time deciding which vest to wear. The one with the fringe or the one with the eagle on the back?”

      ADULT SOLUTION: Go over finances with wife and decide realistic options for our upcoming retirement. See that if we conserve now… not far down the road we can go on some marvelous adventures.

      CHEATER SOLUTION: Find desperate ugly skanky coworker that is SO DESPERATE to have a man she will fuck you for free and buy you that Harley Davidson you’re bitchy wife said ‘no’ too.

      • Okay, the Old Man Playing Hells Angels is almost as pathetic as the Soccer Mom Playing Warcraft.

        I think your situation can be described with some Cheater algebra:

        60-year-old-man + motorcycle + doo rag + vest = Douchebag x Moron

        • “Okay, the Old Man Playing Hells Angels is almost as pathetic as the Soccer Mom Playing Warcraft.”

          Couple those two with GiO’s ex and his Dancing Yeti videos/Hollywood ambitions and I think we’ve completed the trifecta of Crazy Cheater Midlife Choices here at Chump Nation. Lol.

          Still waiting for the stories of the middle-aged cheater who decides he wants to try his hand at MMA, or go fight in Afghanistan. (And of course it will be the Chump’s fault that he never got to serve in Vietnam.)

          • LOL re the Trifecta of Midlife Cheaters. CL’s cartoons are great but I’d love a video of the Yeti square dancing with the Warcraft warriors and the Stupid Old Biker (“S.O.B.”) dude. Maybe to Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage”?

            The cheater who goes off and actually DOES something of note is a rare tale. With most of these folks it’s all about the fantasy life. Old Dude on a $25K bike is actually scared shitless of real biker gangs. Soccer Mom is actually the dowdiest frump on the block and never wears a skin-tight leather bodice or carries an enchanted broadaxe. The common thread is the fake, the facade, the counterfeit. The richness of their fantasy lives is in reverse proportion to quality of their coping skills. To an amazing extent, cheaters are poisonous species of make-believers.

            • “The richness of their fantasy lives is in reverse proportion to quality of their coping skills.”

              Well said.

            • The cheater who goes off and actually DOES something of note is a rare tale. With most of these folks it’s all about the fantasy life.

              I can’t hear this enough!!!!! It’s like I know him, right, so how can he be so efficient and auch a go getter now? That business he started up? His sudden uber confidence? Just another scam!

          • Chris, I guess that’s my intro.

            Problem: Middle-aged computer security guru (“computer games are for people who do not have access to the real toys”), believes that the world should learn to “speak to him using his words, I should not have to deal with everybody else’ words,” stirring up drama keeps away his inner voice that says he is not perfect, religion basher–“they pray to something that does not exist so they do not have to work on their own problems, does not like that teenage daughter has a working brain (graduated early, works, and is in college at 16), older step-daughter is getting married and is no longer under his control, wife won’t drop everything to put away his laundry–that she washed and folded.

            Adult Solution: Admit that children grow up and are their own entity and teenagers have opinions. Get counseling for his grandiose, narcissism, and PTSD issues. Learn to open a drawer and put his 2 shirts and 3 undies away.

            Cheater Solution: Show up with a brand new Harley, tell me about the new motorcycle club he is joining (they do not have a great reputation), volunteer to go to Afghanistan (even though he retired from National Guard 3 years ago), and fight in a local MMA because one of his friends teaches jiujitsu, look up an old girlfriend, she is Christian and wants to teach him about the Bible, stays up all night on the phone or at her house for “Bible study” till 4am!

            • There’s a new euphemism for cheating: Bible study.

              Reminds me of a big floating poker game in the small rural southern town where I live. It’s referred as “the men’s Bible study class.” The difference is those fellas say it with a winki and their wives know they’re fibbing. Cheaters? I’m not so sure they don’t believe half the gas they let fly.

              • Hmmm, so Bible study is like letting Jesus in–they name their penis “Jesus” and put it in!!!!
                “The power of the Holy Spirit? Oh, I thought you meant ‘Spirited Hole'”

                Sorry, I mean no disrespect to any religious affiliation–I’m Christian but they are abusing the title so I am making fun of their stupidity.
                BTW, I happen to love playing poker but cheaters misspelled the word. There is no “h”. (“poke her”)

              • There is a bar called “The Library” in our town. I am sure the owner new how helpful the naming of his place would be to cheating assholes.

              • ‘There’s a new euphemism for cheating: Bible study. ‘

                Or, in my jesus-cheater ex’s case, Sunday School.

                Seriously — the last year of the affair he was hooking up with skanky at/after their co-taught religious ed class for the 6th graders. Surreal to see them at the front of the church together, sitting with the kids. Whole church, very much including the pastor, could see it. Nobody wanted to name it — too much accountability.

            • Holy CRAP-!

              The example of a middle-aged cheater wanting to fight in MMA and go to the Middle East to make up for not going to Vietnam was just a facetious joke I made up off the top of my head. I never thought in a million years that would actually apply to anybody’s ex—and then you commented. LOL! WOW! I think we here at ChumpNation have officially heard it all.

              Not sure if your ex is old enough to have served in Vietnam (an 18-year-old in 1973 when the war ended would be pushing 60 today). But between his General Patton/MMA ambitions AND 4AM Bible Study, your ex definitely takes Cheater Crazy to a whole new level!

              • Chris,
                Glad (or horrified) I could add another branch to the Crazy Nut Tree. He is in his upper 40s and his father fought in Vietnam. He was angry at the fact that he was not born to fight during that time—and he is 1/4 Vietnamese!!!!

                As for MMA, the thought of an older, overweight, little Asian man doing a rear-naked choke on a dude….snort…..double snort!!!! He kills MMA for me. When I think of rear-naked choke, I have a different version and it involves Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture, or Tony Del Duca (TV show, Jacked). They don’t know it yet but they all want me. ha ha ha. That is my version of MMA and I’m sticking to it.

        • Nomar….now that’s some funny shit!~

          60-year-old-man + motorcycle + doo rag + vest = Douchebag x Moron

          For Reals. He would stand in front of the mirror preening in his vests and doo rags. Jeeze oh hell oh bells.

        • Nomar, your algebraic equation made my day. I laughed out loud several times over that one. Thank you.

  • PROBLEM: Husband is working 3-4 jobs to provide for a family of 6. Wife is taking care of 4 kids and one has special needs. Sex life is intermittent and disrupted by kids.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Husband scales back workload and spends more quality time at home. Wife finishes degree and starts working to break-up household monotony. Couple takes some mini-vacations to reconnect and recharge.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Wife finds several “boy-toys” for attention and neglects family and husband.

  • Problem: Getting orders for nine months to an island far away from wife and children. Feeling lonely and stressed out about the job and wife telling me all about problems with the kids and life back home when we talk. Wife doesn’t want to have phone/video sex every time we talk because she is busy taking care of said problems with kids and stuff back home and doesn’t have the need for sex three to four times PER DAY.

    Adult solution: Talk to wife about problems at work and lay all of your stress on her so she knows what’s going on and can help you through it. Support your wife as she struggles with the kids and life and just missing you as you know you are away from home more than you are actually at home due to military obligations. Appreciate the fact that your wife always manages to keep things running while you’re away even if she does get stressed out. Realize that life isn’t all about you and your problems and that marriage is about both of you supporting each other through tough times.

    Cheater solution: find a woman who is willing to fuck you, start a relationship with her while you are on the island so that you’re no so lonely. Act like everything is fine whenever you talk to your wife. Tell wife that you had to buy cleaning products when she asks you why you are withdrawing large sums of money from the account when money is already tight. Come home from deployment and treat you wife like shit for five months while still having a relationship with the Guambat whore hole who doesn’t care that you have a wife and two children. Completely check out of family life so you don’t have to worry about anything having to do with the kids or running of the home. Start acting like the young single soldiers that you insist on bring jan around your kids, even though they are alcoholics and terrible role models for your kids to see. Throw away ten years of marriage as if it were nothing and devastate your children. Who cares, you’re happy and have your Guambat now so all is right in the world.

  • PROBLEM: My wife and I recently bought a home. We talked about tightening our belts and paying off all our bills for the year, so that we’d be in better shape financially. We want to be able to pay off the mortgage and be debt free when it becomes time to retire.

    ADULT SOLUTION: I will discuss with my wife better ways we could save up for our goal. I don’t need to buy a gun every week, besides having an arsenal of 20 should be enough for anyone. I see the value in being debt free, so I’m going to stick by my original agreement and work together to put us on solid financial footing.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: I’m going to fuck another married whore on Friday afternoons for as long as I can get away with it. While I do this, I will plot to financially and emotionally destroy my wife. After that, I will resent her and tell my friends and family that the destruction of our marriage was all her fault.

    • Dear God in heaven, he can’t stay on a budget…so fuck a married whore. Makes sense to a cheater.

      • Well, that’s the only obvious thing I can point to that he didn’t like. There really wasn’t anything else, at least that he shared with me. If he didn’t want to continue with our plan all he had to do was open his mouth. Instead, he opted for his zipper.

  • Problem: Being a grown-up is really hard. Full-time work, home ownership, vehicle maintenance, bill-paying and an energetic three-year old are way more demanding of time than I thought they could possibly be. Also, my wife is pregnant with a second baby, a baby I encouraged her to have, and she is sick – like, ALL the time. I keep doing my thing, taking all the time I need to be out of the house, hunting, fishing, playing sports and seeing my friends, but my wife (it’s so weird!) is getting really resentful about getting stuck with the bulk of the life responsibilities. Plus, she gets on my case a LOT about how she has a hard time finding the time in the day for herself to take a shower. We’re definitely fighting more and more about what she calls a “fair solution to splitting the responsibilities.”

    Then one of my coworkers – who happens to be young, single, really hot, and doesn’t HAVE any responsibilities – well, she got stupidly drunk at a party I attended (wife was at home, being a mom, of course) over the holidays, and she tried to kiss me! I shut it down, but it got me to thinking. I mean, this girl is soooo hot!

    Adult solution: Tell my wife how I’ve been feeling. Work together to come up with a plan of attack for how to deal with the “really young kids” years in a way that is respectful of both of us as individuals who need down-time. Go to counseling, if necessary. Be honest about my feelings. Seek advice from happily married men who survived raising young children and kept their marriages strong and intact. TELL THE TRUTH.

    Cheater solution: Just go after the chick who tried to steal the kiss, because what I really need is ONE MORE ESCAPE from reality.

  • Problem: Wife is successful, classy, pretty, self sufficient but we can’t get pregnant. – Scratch that- Gets pregnant multiple times with invitro but it never sticks and she almost dies from a complication of invitro. She makes more money than I do and only works part time. I feel like life isn’t fair

    Adult solution: Talk to wife, go to hospital and show that you love her and you are in this together. Consider adopting since she has mentioned this several times. Pray more since you say you are a Christian.

    Cheater solution: Start fucking around with trashy town whore who is a backwoods waitress that looks like an Oompah Loompah. When wife finds out blame it on wife for not being able to have your baby.

    • Blaming you for your infertility as reason to cheat?

      He’s sick. Total sicko. I’m sorry.

    • My winner H did something similar – constantly telling me I was a defeatist because of my sadness at enduring 10 years of infertility, pretty much completely on my own. One of the many reasons he took up with the porn star.

      Sorry he was suck a jerk.

    • I’m soo sorry Sweetie…

      Take Comfort though that you’re not stuck with THAT DEMON’s SPAWN.
      Seriously.

      • Oh, Greeneyes, he stabbed you RIGHT where it hurt. So sorry.

        But I need to warn you: breeding with fucktards is so problematic. Mine triangulates his D15, so tragic, asking her what I am doing and intending ‘I can’t talk to Mom, she gets so angry’.

        The wrongness of it hurts so bad, D has developed an eating disorder because of all this childish ‘coping’.

  • Problem: Extricated myself from the near-disaster of making another commitment to a woman who loves me. Not my first rodeo. I was smart enough to have a “reason” to postpone and a place to go. Got the gaslight turned up high so the chump who loves me is focusing on what she’s doing wrong instead of what I’m doing. Had it all set up so I could just fade off into the sunset with someone new who adores me. She’s married, therefore safe, and we do it all by FB so she won’t get caught. But the Chump found my FB page with Schmoopie as my only friend. She confronted me about the affair!
    Adult solution: Go to the house, sit down, tell the truth. Answer questions. Admit what I’ve done. Try to make amends.
    Cheater solution: Go nuts on the Chump. Yell. Scream. Make threats about what I’ll do if she goes public. Blame her for accusing me. Hang up. Ignore all efforts to wind up business or meet obligations because after all she accused me! Of something I was doing!

  • Problem: I like things. I want lots and lots of things. I whine and stomp my feet like a child when I see the designer clothes and fancy cars I want. My boring wife thinks we should live within our means and plan for boring things like retirement. Who cares about retirement? I want things now! Things make me feel good…for a few minutes anyway.

    Adult solution: Take part in the family budget and look at what it actually costs to raise a family, maintain a home, etcetera. Help wife to create a savings plan to maybe purchase some fun things .

    Cheater solution: Find a whore online who likes things as much as I do! Leave my wife with no notice and move right in with whore. We both drive expensive cars! We wear designer clothing! We vacation at 5 star spas around the world! It’s all good because my now ex-wife is like a nanny that I can dump my kids on when I need to take said expensive vacations. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, but I still managed to buy my whore an expensive engagement ring. I wish my ex-wife wouldn’t be such a buzz kill. She’s always pestering me about medical/dental bills for the kids, college funds, etc. That’s not fun! I like fun stuff!

    • That’s hilarious, MEJ! May the two of them spend their way into oblivion.

    • You Know what You CAN’T BUY , Right ?
      and hon, You’ve got that in Spades..

      Let him have his ” Trinkets “..

      Save Your TREASURE for a Man that DESERVES you.

      • Stuff! and MORE STUFF! and the pictures on FB to indicate he does not need to be married as he is free now and can just go do STUFF!

        D’day came and went, no remorse or apology or responsibility, he has moved home with mummy so is getting his encouragement kibble.

        Post D’day STUFF, New car, 4 day camping trip 6 hours away with out Kids, 10+ hour drive to another state for 2 days to do winery tours with his brother, (missed the child support payment that month), new cloths, new phone, new Ipods for the younger two, and it continues. Yet has had the audacity to cancel our family hospital cover because he can no longer afford it.

        At the same time he is demanding access to our home to collect his stuff, we own a modest single story three bedroom home and he is going to need a truck to collect his stuff there is so much of it, bought stuff, inherited stuff, acquired stuff. not to mention what he considers to be his our of our joint stuff. He can have it all and then I can start again with a blank canvas.

        • Even on a tight budget, it’s great to start over. So many things can be rehabbed, painted. repurposed. It’s fun to make a home reflect your own taste and style.

  • PROBLEM: Wife stopped initiating sex with me, probably because it is as much fun for me to turn her down as it actually is to have sex. I love the one where she’s made a great dinner, wears a hot lacy number and dotes on me all evening. Then I shoot her down in bed – tell her she’s a poor communicator and obviously not interested in sex. So, no sex for a few months.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Talk it over. Talk to doctor. See a therapist.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Go fuck ho-worker. Have an EA with a second. Start dredging FB for new conquests. When busted blame wife for lack of sex.

    —-

    PROBLEM: Infant daughter has a 103.5 fever, doing terrifying limp, quiet, sick baby thing. Wife runs out of infant Tylenol. Sends me to the store for more.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Panic. Go to store ASAP, come home with Tylenol. Ibuprofin. Anything else remotely relevant from drug aisle. Help with keeping baby cool.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Go to store, come home with liter of tequila, no medicine. Really, who is suffering here? Turn on TV to mask noise of porn on computer. Probably not necessary as wife is too busy fussing over baby to notice me. I wish she’d take a break from sick baby to make me a margarita – how inconsiderate!

      • oh yeah, denying you sex then blaming you for a sexless marriage. That really pissed me off…

        • And enjoying the pain he causes his wife. Cruel. Heartless. Indifferent to his child. When I read a story like this, I really get what “lose a cheater, gain a life” means.

  • Problem: H joined facebook and posted his profile out there. An old girlfriend finds him on facebook and friends him. They start getting friendly not only on facebook but through texts and emails and phone calls.

    Adult Solution: Talk to husband about how “friendly” they are getting and suggest he “un”friends her because he is passing into dangerous territory with her. I also suggest that all of the flattery that he is passing her way might better be served passing my way. He takes my suggestion and turns away from old girlfriend realizing that he has a commitment to his marriage.

    Cheater solution: Meet her in a hotel a month after being friended on facebook and have sex. Use work phone and work email instead of personal ones. Tell wife that he has ended his “friendship” with her. 2 months later request a divorce so that they can be together because “first loves have a draw that I will never understand.”

  • PROBLEM: My husband consistently lies to me, devalues my needs and wants, constantly criticizes me, and rarely tells me he loves/appreciates me but expects me to keep up the charade of perfect wife and mother.

    ADULT SOLUTION: If he doesn’t immediately stop the abusive behavior and seek counseling to make real change, dump his ass. You’re a human being who deserves to be treated well and to be loved. Your kids deserve to be raised in a loving environment too.

    CODEPENDANT SOLUTION: Well, I must be the problem here so I’m going to do everything I can to make him see the light. When all my attempts to control and manipulate him into better behavior fail, I’m going to stay in this miserable marriage because I don’t know what else to do and I’m afraid of divorce.

    ***After 10 years of living the insanity of codependancy, I’ve chosen the adult solution. Yay me!***

  • Too bad most of our “problems” or “issues” were made up and all in his mind. But anyway, here is one of the “problems” :
    He claimed I hated his family. So his cheater solution was to fuck other women.

  • This problem is not mine but a true story my brother’s girlfriend told me about her ex.

    PROBLEM: My wife is in labour and is just about to go into the delivery room. I’m out of my comfort zone. It’s all too much. She’s about to give birth to our child and all the focus is on her. Nobody’s paying me any attention, it’s all about her.

    ADULT SOLUTION: This is a big day for both of us. It must be terrifying giving birth for the first time. I’ll forget about myself for now and help her through this even though it’s a bit scary and no one is bothering about me.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: I’ll tell her now, tell her that it’s all over between us, that we’re finished that I don’t actually want to be with her. This will cause her huge panic and upset and result in me being thrown out of the delivery room by staff.

      • She’s BETTER WITHOUT his Sorry Arse…

        LABOR is HARD Enough.

    • OMG — I found out (after D-Day) from OW’s then-husband, that the plan hatched by OW and my H was to tell me he was divorcing me AS SOON AS I HAD GIVEN BIRTH to our son — our second child — while I was still in the hospital. What kind of people actually PLAN to tell the wife in the hospital delivery room????? I think it was his way of putting her off just a bit, buying some time, “I’ll tell her as soon as the baby is born.” But, after a harrowing labor and delivery (baby was over 10 lbs and was in distress a few times) I guess my H chickened out. Turns out OW got REALLY PISSED at him for not telling me then. Instead, I got the bomb dropped on me one week later at 1 a.m. right after the midnight feed. Of course, he said nothing about having an OW. Just how terrible a wife I was (what? for setting him up in business not once, but twice?) and how unhappy he had been for a “long time.” So he goes and gets me pregnant not once but twice????? One would think he could have cut me loose if I was such a terrible wife! Ha ha ha ha. What is it about these folks and delivery rooms????

      • Wow Delta that is truly horrific. What an absolute pig and bitch. For a man to do that to the mother of his child and for a woman to do that to another woman is just cruel beyond belief.

        Special place in hell for both of them.

      • That is horrible…it never ceases to amaze me even with all the awful cheater stories I have heard…the depths of depravity and hatefulness (and pure selfishness) of these cheaters. What type of once-celled amoeba does something like dump his wife one week after having a baby?? Truly a lower life form with no soul….

  • PROBLEM
    Unhappy, Hitting 50, Best friend dies.
    ADULT SOLUTION
    Share thoughts and feelings with wife.
    CHEATER SOLUTION
    Fuck best friend’s widow.

    • Verity yours reads somewhat like a haiku.

      Perhaps there should be a competition whereby chumps attempt to condense the all the fuckedupness into a three line, seventeen syllable haiku!

        • How cool, I just took a quick look. What fun!

          There’s also the six word story thing à la Ernest Hemmingway – (Baby shoes. For sale. Never worn.) Reckon chumps could get creative and have a laugh with that too.

      • This is not a cheat story Or it may be I’m not sure?

        Problem: Husband dies leaving wife with 13yr old child from previous marriage and 4yr old from theirs.

        Adult solution: Grieve, Heal, love your kids get healthy draw on family and friends for support.

        Bullshit solution: Less than a month after husband dies go to Christmas eve party at neighbors house, have sex with neighbors brother who has just been released from prison. Christmas morning let him move in and then become offended at family when they arrive at your home Christmas day to support you and the kids through this tough time when they show there displeasure that you already have a new man.

        true story this way my mother and I was the 4 yr old.

        • Oh, Sammie! Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and make people’s childhoods better, This is one of those times.

          • ANR, I had to stand up to someone tonight that has in the past tried to bully me into submitting to his authority and he is not my husband. And his argument was if I had had a real father figure in my life I wouldn’t be acting the was I was. Basically I was setting boundaries with this person and calling him and his posse on the BS, lies and utter disgusting behavior which I have endured from them since my D”DAY. Truth is I had a better relationship with the X crim my mother brought home that Christmas than I did with her and he went back into jail to escape her when I was 16.
            Please don’t feel sorry for me as I see that we are all shaped my our journey and as we get older we acknowledge it for what it is and move on. I have moved on. I am grateful I am not on the other side of the fence having a pity party saying yes I cheated but just look at my FOO issues. I like Chump nation and i know It is a far better place to live. Boundaries are not fully set with this person yet but the cement is drying. 🙂

    • * GROWLS *

      W T F !!!!!!

      Killing 2 Birds with ONE Fuck ? !

  • Ooh ooh me too!

    Problem: After I got married, I realized that a “normal” life with wife and kids was not for me. I like a wilder kind of sex life, possibly polyamorous situations, and frankly there are one or two women at work that I am starting to hang around with in a way that is improper and I know is leading to more. My wife and I just really don’t have the same viewpoints about sex and life in general. My wife is successful and that makes me feel inferior, and she does not praise me like these other women do. This just isn’t the wife, family or lifestyle for me. I just didn’t realize all of this until now.

    Solution: My wife will be very angry and upset, we have (two and eventually while all of this is going on) three children. But she is already suspicious and asking a lot of questions. So instead of denying, I am just going to tell her the truth. That way we can divorce and she can move on and re-marry, and even have more kids if she wants. And then I can live the kind of life I want too. And I will still have a relationship with and support my children, and in the end my wife and I may become friends or at least friendly.

    Cheater solution: I will just lie to my wife, tell her she is insanely jealous and has mental problems to boot. I’ll go to her family and friends to help convince her she is just crazy, and that I am really a great and loving husband. I will act like I adore her. I don’t want to be embarrassed, everyone thinks I am a great guy. And my wife makes more money than these other women, I deserve to have that kind of support for my consulting business which I am sure is finally about to take off. Plus, I can have all kinds of sex and use the family’s money to look like I am a success, and the family is an awesome front and makes me feel like a big fish in a small pond. No one will catch me because I am so special, (look I’ve gotten away with it for over 15 years!) But just in case my wife does, I will keep the other women on a back burner. And if I’m caught I’ll just start a “new” life and leave my wife and young adult and teen children behind. I’ll refuse to go to counseling to keep a relationship with my kids… They are like their mother, they don’t really appreciate how incredible I am! I don’t feel good about myself if I think about them at all, so I just won’t. Hey, there’s a whole other world out there for me now, and it’s all about ME.

  • PROBLEM: Despite a healthy and happy relationship with a mature, beautiful, generous and loving woman, I have commitment issues stemming from my messed up childhood. Why waste time talking about it, right? I choose to deal with my issues by being irrationally angry, talking about wanting to kill my mother, and getting drunk all the time.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Create and enforce healthy boundaries between self and mother to minimize destructive feelings, seek counseling immediately and open lines of communication with supportive and loving girlfriend of 6 years.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: At last! Found a divorcee with a 9 year old son who has low self-esteem, is incredibly lonely and actually gets turned on talking about misery and how life has screwed her over. Begin clandestine emotional (physical?) affair immediately. Lie to girlfriend, continue cheating, lie to affair partner by telling her the girlfriend is already dumped, finally dump girlfriend but not before enjoying one last gourmet meal that she spent 2 hours cooking for Easter.

  • Problem: both busy with stress of graduate school, attending different schools, etc. Most of we time only talk about “work.”

    Adult solution: tell wife unhappy, start making time to do other things and talk about things other than work/school.

    Cheater solution: have a physical affair with a fellow graduate student because she is “interesting.” (So much for not talking about work….). Gaslight wife.

    Postscript: admit 12 yrs later that wife was not crazy… Really was an affair with unprotected sex.. Never mind potential danger to wife and baby (got pregnant 4-6 months after the affair was found out).

  • Problem:
    I hide in a dark room with my computers instead of building relationships with humans. Bad stuff happens to me all the time. People expect too much of me. I buy equipment I probably won’t ever use on the internet with credit cards so I feel better. I’m the age my dad was when he died. I’m fat so I’ll go to the gym and spend many hours a week perfecting my physique. My wife doesn’t make me feel special. My wife just spends all her time working to support us- she makes me feel inadequate. My wife has friends and family that don’t like me- they expect me to go places and do stuff but I have critically important work to do and porn to watch. My son is my emotional trampoline- he is my reason for living and I would never do anything to hurt him. My wife doesn’t cook dinner for me. She’s so selfish, working her two businesses so she can lord the money over me. I pay my fair share- 20% of our household expenses- and the rest is mine, mine, mine to use for whatever I want. When we go out to dinner, sometimes my wife makes me decide where to go. My wife is so mean, she sleeps in the other room because I snore and she says she is tired because she is up taking care of our young son, and working a lot, but I need rest too! My wife is mean because she doesn’t come home from work in the middle of the day to have sex with me when I feel like it, and that’s convenient for me since I work at home. My wife thinks I should pick up my dirty clothes off the floor and put them in the hamper so she can wash them. One day I didn’t have any clean white socks!

    Adult Solution:
    Grow the fuck up and take off my martyr suit.

    Cheater Solution: shop for new women on Ashley Madison and find a new one that makes more money than my wife. Use our kids as cover for our affair. Break up her marriage and treat her kids to me in bed with their mom on their first Father’s Day without their dad. Wait until my horrible wife files for divorce, then do everything in my power to rape her financially and drag out every possible court action so she spends the equivalent of our son’s first two years of college on legal fees…hopefully I can get her to waste even more of our son’s future on my attempts to make her look like the bad guy here. Treat my son as my therapist. Move in with my girlfriend an hour away from my son’s school and make him commute. Refuse to speak to son’s actual therapist when son wants to make changes to the parenting plan. Be a world-class dick… because I can.

    • Oh my god…. yes to all of this. GROW UP! And what the fuck… why do they get mad when we can’t/won’t come home for a “nooner”. So annoying. I AM AT WORK ASSHOLE!

  • Problem-Wife is depressed at doing all the heavy lifting childcare-wise, and from working four part time jobs to accomodate hubby’s work schedule. Gets even more depressed when she finds out her dad has cancer. She lives in another country, so wants to spend money to go and visit.

    Adult solution-organize work schedule to take pressure off wife. Dip into savings for airline ticket. Comfort wife and child, who are about to lose father/grandfather.

    Cheater solution-tell wife the money can’t be spared, but she could take on more work to earn the airfare. When she does, use that extra time to fuck brother’s ex who your kid regards as an auntie. Spend the extra money earned on coke and vodka. When kid starts self-harming as a way to cope, blame wife.

  • PROBLEM: My FOO lied to me for years – I’m adopted.

    ADULT SOLUTION: My wife tells me that fundamentally I am the same person and she loves me no matter what. I can ask the remaining relatives to tell me what they know. Oh, that didn’t work? My wife tells me we can get a copy of my original birth certificate from my country of origin, and does the work to get it. No record of me exists, because my parents falsified my records? My wife tells me that there are resources to help me locate my birth mother, or at least find out more information about my origins. She has even located a case worker in the country where I was born to help with this.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: I’m gonna go fuck a 20-year-old (which actually happened).

  • Problem: Husband has a major alcohol problem that is affecting his health, marriage and job.

    Adult Solution: Husband stops drinking, goes to AA, wife in turn will stop any alcohol consumption in support, and attend Alanon meetings. And be 100% supportive in helping him beat it.

    Cheater Solution: Same DAY that husband decides to quit drinking, husband is found at bar across the street, drinking. Two days later gets the number of another bar-fly. Within a week, bar-fly skank moves into marital home while wife at sister’s house for the night getting support. Bar skank and he broke up of course a couple of years later, not without police involvement because two alkies together is always a good idea. Husband now getting “sober” in LA. You can’t make this shit up.

  • Problem: I just don’t feel like it [marriage] anymore. Just like I did not feel like my last job. Just like I didn’t feel like my last 20 cars. Just like I didn’t feel like law school. Just like I didn’t feel like my last girlfriend. I don’t care.

    Adult Solution: I might want to get that sociopathy checked out.
    OR
    Adult Solution: I am a self-proclaimed a-hole. I cannot commit to anything. Let’s get a divorce because I have issues I probably will never address, but we will do this with dignity and respect because that is the decent thing to do.

    Cheater Solution: I will screw someone else. Because I feel like it. But I won’t tell you that. I will walk out while you beg for some logical rationale for my batshit crazy behavior. I don’t care.

    I am convinced Carole King was onto my husband before he was even born.

  • Problem: My wife is upset I spend 3-5 nights and weekends with my best guy friend.
    Adult solution: cut back on some of the going out and spend time with the family and with her.
    Cheater solution: whine and cry about how I am misunderstood to the bar tender and drown my pities in more booze, then fuck her and start spending all my time with her…….

    Yep, that solved everything!!!! At least for me…. 🙂
    Good riddance!!!!!

  • Problem: Me and my partner don’t have as passionate relationship as we did years ago due to the stress of renovating a house and the financial and time pressures it brings.

    Adult Solution: Talk to my partner about my desires and work out a way that we can bring that spark back into out relationship and make more time for each other.

    Cheaters Solution: Fuck a Guy I only just met a few hours earlier at a conference that my partner paid for me to attend to help me advance my career. This new guy said he is going to me my mentor, career advancement achieved!

  • Problem: I lost my job and I’m suffering from very low self-esteem.

    Adult Solution: I talk to my wife, therapist, or a friend about how I am really feeling. Take pride in my new home, young daughter, and new job.

    Cheater Solution: I go to massage parlors every day for hand jobs until I run out of money.

  • Problem: New wife’s cat dies

    Adult solution: Commiserate. Get new cat.

    Cheater solution: Fuck 50 hookers.

    • I know that’s not funny, but it sure made me laugh! Cat dies = fuck 50 hookers. Yeah, that’s makes sense!

      • LOL at “cat dies = fuck 50 hookers”

        Boy, cheaters really have *no idea* how cause and effect relationships work.

        Good thing his parrot didn’t die. I heard that causes a cheater to bugger 50 syphyllitic possums.

    • Cat dies—>Fuck hookers. That’s a double entendre joke just BEGGING to be written.

      But alas, I’m going to be a gentleman today and NOT channel my inner-Mrs. Slocombe….

        • Absolutely love “Are You Being Served.” Have them all on DVD.
          “Keeping Up Appearances” runs a close 2nd tho. 😉

      • Someone needs to make a meme of a picture of Dean “ugly as a bag of smashed assholes” McDermott with “cat dies” at the top and “fuck 50 hookers” at the bottom. There’s a mug I’d buy at cafepress.com.

  • Problem: My wife gives our kids ALL of her attention never mind that I don’t have anything to do with them unless someone else is around and it is to my advantage to do so. She also doesn’t appreciate the fact that I moved her 1800 miles so I could further my education and made her go to work to support me in this endeavor. Now that I work 12-hour shifts I have plenty of time to find new “friends” on Facebook and look at all the porn I want since I’m the only one home several days a week!!!! Wife also spends all weekend cleaning the house, doing the errands, and shuttling kids all over to their activities which I so graciously pay for since I’m the only one who works. Not sure what the wife does at work since she doesn’t bring home the size paycheck that I do. Since I make the majority of the money, why should I have to clean toilets or vacuum floors? MY day off is MY day off! Also, in my irritation due to the lack of getting enough bang for my buck, I’m verbally and emotionally abusive to the wife and kids. And since I make plenty of money I’ll just spend all I want. Who saves money for college and retirement anyway?

    Adult Solution: Individual therapy, marriage counseling, family therapy – Help around the house, make intentional efforts to be a parent. Be respectful, appreciative, start telling the truth, quit gaslighting and projecting and all of the other narcissistic traits that I have.

    Cheater Solution: It’s too much work to rebuild what I’ve destroyed. I’ll just become emotionally involved with someone at work who is a known home wrecker, and when I allegedly point a gun at her and she files a felony charge against me, I’ll get scared I could lose my job that only I worked and sacrificed to get to and promise the wife I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep our family together. Oops, it’s too hard to go to counseling and tell the truth. I’ll just tell the therapist I have PTSD from the war which I was never in and he can work on me from that angle. It’s not me that’s the problem anyway! I’ll fix myself with multiple liaisons with my new FB friends and when those women see through me, I’ll find someone on Match.com. Yep! Found her! SHE appreciates me because she is so happy she is not living in a $400/month hole anymore and now she doesn’t have to worry about the bills due to her autoimmune disease and the impending bankruptcy. But she gives me lots of attention and all I have to do is buy her lots of shiny things! This was the solution all the time!

  • I can play this game all day long.
    PROBLEM:
    I’ve been unemployed for some time and my girlfriend kept nagging me to get a pt job to supplement my unemployment checks. I got the pt job to appease her. I hate the pt job because it is below my skill level and doesn’t utilizes my college degree. I’m frustrated with how my life has turned out. I’ve been exhibiting extreme passive aggressiveness to cope with my reality and its problems. The only thing which seems to fill up the void is porn. Girlfriend is still nagging and seems unhappy. Now she started to nag me about therapy for us and for myself. Meanwhile, one of my clients owes me 1K for prof services and his wife has been texting me saying she could work something out on his behalf (true story.)
    ADULT solution: I’m going to put away the porn and excessive net browsing (looking for bullshit) to kill time. I am going to explore the possibility of intensive therapy to gain some insight into my professional as well as personal problems. I will do everything possible to salvage my relationship, especially for the sake of my child. I will tell the whore wife of my client that I am not interested in adultery and take my client to small claims court for debt he owes me.
    CHEATER solution: nah, I will just fuck my Client’s whore wife a few times to feel like the debt has been settled. Of course, I will not consult my girlfriend about this plan of action.

  • Problem: husband works 90+ hours a week, so no time to connect as a couple. Fall out of love.

    Adult solution: make time to connect, have honest communication about needs, see a counselor, divorce, be reasonable and considerate to each other’s feelings.

    Cheater solution: spend even less time at home because you’re screwing a married coworker, drink heavily when home, rewrite history, emotionally abuse wife, abandon family at Christmas and elope with other woman 30 days after divorce is final. Continue gaslighting and blame shifting ex wife for fun.

    Yeah, it’s easy to trust my ex sucks…

  • Problem: Couple has grown apart over the years. Wife worked full-time to support them after moving away from home for husband’s grad school. Couple moved again for husband’s first job in his field, which was awful, and he looks for any way out — jobs in other states, going back to school for a different field, etc. Wife is afraid she’ll be abandoned just as she’s started going back to school herself.

    Adult solution: Individual therapy (check) and marriage counseling, talking about problems and fears, and taking time to grow together into a mutually supportive relationship.

    Cheater solution: Make friends with a 23-year-old guy in her area of study. Become emotionally dependent on him. Ignore concerns of husband, mom and sister. Never tell therapist what’s really going on. Get to “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” stage with husband and tell him the marriage is not a priority. Start sleeping with 23-year-old guy. Remain friends with said guy until two weeks before deciding to work on the marriage.

  • I must be getting closer to Meh because I just can’t be bothered to write ‘it’ all down again, but you know what his solution was anyway….

    So here’s some levity ( you know, fun) from the blog thingsmyexsaid.com ( it isn’t mine!) and today’s post is spot on for this topic.

    http://thingsmyexsaid.com/tag/things-my-ex-said/

    • Mikky, thanks for the shout out! Glad you are enjoying the site. And thanks for leading me to this one! A great find that I will be visiting again and again.

  • Problem: I spend so much time working at this start-up company, I don’t have any time to spend with my fiancee because I’m soooo tired after the commute. Whenever I have days off, all I want to do is sleep, but I also get upset when my fiancee doesn’t plan romantic getaways or fun evenings. Even if she makes plans though, I’ll ditch her to go have a drink with my co-workers without telling her.

    Adult Solution: I really should spend some time with my fiancee. I’ll take a vacation or use my day off to spend some time with her instead of my co-workers that I see every day. Maybe I’ll even request that the start-up hire someone else to help me with my workload. I’ll also work on getting better about letting my fiancee know ahead of time if I’ll be going out with “the guys” so she can do something fun without waiting for a last-minute text from me canceling Date Night.

    Cheater Solution: I’ll go fuck a co-worker who’s also engaged! That way, working’s kind of like the quality time couples need to have! She’ll also be more empathetic because we’re in the same situation!

  • PROBLEM: My wife just got a new job, making 50% more than her previous job, and slightly more than me for the first time. She is stressed and when I bring up having kids, she tells me she’d like to wait a year, save money, talk about what kind of parents we’d like to be. She tells me she’s worried about my drinking and pot-smoking, and that she’s scared of being a mother because of her own childhood, which wasn’t always easy.
    ADULT SOLUTION: Talk to my wife about her fears, and acknowledge that they are real and that you will address them together. Spend time with her and let her know she’s your top priority. Tell her you’re proud of her when she shares the great reviews she’s getting from her boss.
    CHEATER SOLUTION: Refuse to let my wife boss me around. She’s not the boss of me. Buy a gun and hide it in the attic. Drink more – in fact: throw cocaine into the mix for extra fun. Start reaching out to old girlfriends on Facebook to see who’s still interested. Start an affair with an old friend of a friend who is going through her own marital difficulties. Tell her what a bitch my wife is, and agree with her when she tells me that my wife is the source of all of my problems.
    When my wife finds out about the affair, tell her it’s because she’s so difficult and that she should have begged me to impregnate her. Anything else is emasculating. Tell her the stress of being found out is too much for me to take. Buy a motorcycle to cheer myself up.

  • PROBLEM: i to spend money and look like the big successful man in front of my work acquaintances and bar buddies. So I insisted that my new wife and I buy this really expensive house in the hot part of town. But now I realize that owning a big house is takes so much more time and money than an apartment like I’m used to, and I like to spend my time and money only on things I like.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Talk with wife how household chores can be shared or hired out. Discuss with her how we can budget both our salaries so I can still spend some money on myself.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Say nothing. Instead continue to spend money like I’m single. Do nothing around the house, leave repair, maintenance and bill paying up to the wife. Be sure to accept as many weekend oncalls on the job so I won’t be home until the evening, so I can say how tired I am…even though I work as a manager and sit at my desk all day handling complaints and such. If I want to buy something expensive for myself, take money out of my retirement fund and say nothing to the wife or the IRS. When the IRS catches on, hide the notices until the tax bill is over 20 grand. Let the wife sort it all out, while I continue to entertain bar whores in my fancy retirement money funded SUV.

  • See a Pretty Woman who has Great Potential on a Dating site Who Plainly States She Has NO kids and Doesn’t Want a Man with ANY…

    Adult Solution : Respect Her Wishes, Know that What You ARE and Your Situation isn’t what’s BEST for HER, Wish her Well and Good Luck in Love and Find Someone who’s Actually Looking for Someone Like You.

    Cheater Solution : LIE to HER About Having NO Kids…EVEN Though You’ve got , Not only Several, but Several BabyMamas Too…..Not only THAT..Lie to Her About EVERYTHING, Except your Love for Animals, Gardening, and your Nieces and Nephews.

    To HELL with what SHE Wants and Needs.

  • PROBLEM: My mother died a few months ago. I feel wracked by guilt because I wasn’t such a great daughter to her. Inheriting money from her makes me feel guiltier. I don’t feel comfortable sharing my feelings about this with my husband anymore — it seems like it’s taken over our life and I’m tired of how it’s affecting our relationship.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Accept that I can’t change the past but do some work (perhaps with a therapist) about how to be more giving in my relationships. Actually doing something about my feelings will mean that they won’t dominate my relationship with my husband so much. Put the money in a term deposit until I figure out what to do with it — or put in into our children’s education funds — for sure my mother would approve of that.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Have an affair with my boss to take my mind off things. Drink heavily and neglect my husband and children. Lend my inheritance to my boss — he’s tapped out the banks and all his friends, so this will make me VERY IMPORTANT to him, and I can charge a near-criminal rate of interest. Maybe he can just keep the money for our magical future life together.

  • Problem: My wife is pregnant with our fourth child because I want more kids, yet I’m worried about finances.

    Adult Solution: Read Dave Ramsey’s Financial makeover book each night as a couple.

    Cheater solution: Impregnate my infertile co-worker and then pay child suppport of $2000+ a month for the next 18 years.

  • Mine is shorthand…

    PROBLEM: general life issues that come up for every person

    ADULT SOLUTION: deal with things as they come up with communication, honesty, respect and cooperation

    CHEATER SOLUTION: pay hookers for blowjobs because easier

    *head desk*

  • PROBLEM: I told my husband about my affair and he is spiralling into depression. He keeps asking for support, reassurance, and just to be held and told I love him. In one of our marriage counselling sessions he got quite angry at me. I want to stay married, because it’s easier all around.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Offer emotional support to husband. Participate in counselling, understanding that it won’t always be easy but that my husband has a right to his feelings as I do to mine.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Leave husband alone with his distress — that shit is uncomfortable! Blow off counselling — no point spending good money to be abused, and I don’t much like making myself vulnerable anyway. That’s my husband’s job.

    • Ahahaha…the old ‘what you say to me in therapy is abusive!’ because dang, all that honesty about cheating and betrayal and fucking someone over is not fun to hear. In fact, it’s downright abusive!

      Are these people even remotely for real?

        • Well, now it’s final OW’s problem. One of my kids just gave me an earful about life over in lala land. Ex has apparently not lost his lying habit and is telling some real doozies to final OW. I cannot stop laughing. It always comes out in the end so really why lie?

          • Ah, good to hear Nord, I love when these cheaters and their AP’s end up with what they deserve– themselves.

  • Problem: Husband works f/t job and most non working hours are spent partying and drinking with friends-ongoing for years. Wife stays home managing household and 3 kids on her own. Wife develops serious health condition over period of 5 years, becomes disabled for a period of time and husband checks out, spending much of time out of state.Husband becomes more angry and distant refusing to speak with wife and sleeps in separate bedroom. Husband leaves wife’s care in hands of 17 y/o son expecting him to take care of wife and drive her to MD appts.
    Adult solution: Act like a man and If unhappy find ways to work on marriage- counseling or couples therapy. Spend more time at home helping with other children and with wife. spend quality time together as a couple. Stop drinking and partying.If marriage is not salvageable after counseling and effort talk with wife and file for divorce.
    Cheater solution: Spend time in separate bedroom getting on fb and other sites trying to pick up married women. Carry on affairs with married women that have families. Secretly date and then move in with latest married gf telling wife and children you are working out of state and visiting with your family. Convince your attorney and others that will listen that there is no affair partner, your wife is crazy and was never very sick. Inform children that their mother was to blame for the breakup of the family.

    Adult solution: Try to spend more time at home helping t chores and take care of other children.

    • I’m so glad I didn’t procreate. I feel so bad for all of you having to deal with all of this while trying to protect your kids.

      (((hugs)))

  • I love this! I could have written so many of the other ones that I have read.

    PROBLEM: I’m a dreamer. Have a wife that is more grounded but respects and supports my dreams but challenges them in a healthy way. I take advantage of her trusting nature and start a business with her help and money. Ran said business into the ground in less than a year because I’m an alcoholic. Lose everything we put into the business. Wife sees me through a few health crises including almost dying from liver failure. Finally decide to quit drinking and make a full recovery. Wife is glad I’m on the mend but has some feelings of disappointment after the loss of the business and the infertility that has plagued us for most of our marriage.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Realize I may have let her down in some ways but she has said she is glad things are turning around and the future looks bright. I know she will forgive me if I show a little humility and gratitude. Counseling and attending AA would probably be a great idea as well.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Hey, I almost died! Everyone should be thrilled I am still gracing the world with my presence and forget every dumb thing I did when I was a drunk. So what if I ignored my wife’s pleas to start a family, bankrupted us and almost drank myself to death – none of those things are that big of a deal! It’s my time now to make up for all the things I missed out on while drinking and take my life to the next level! So I am going to pretend I am Kid Rock or Jesse James and get me a porn star girlfriend because I cheated death and have a kick ass body and I deserve it. Wife who?

    • Should have added on the CHEATER SOLUTION:

      Oh yeah, my wife is the fat, sloppy, lazy, overspending jerk who can’t keep up with the perfection that is me!

  • PROBLEM: Divorce mediation with ex is filled with drama. He’s consistently walked back on his promises while expecting me to keep mine. He expects me to concede most of what I want and to give him 110% of what he wants. When I protest, he tells me that I’m too dumb to figure all this out myself and employs tactics to wear my defenses down until I capitulate to his demands.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Fire mediator and drop out, as you cannot negotiate with someone who operates in bad faith. Hire an attorney who will fight for your best interests, even if it means conceding that little sliver of “control.” Realize that it might be expensive but your best interests are served by cutting out this insanity.

    CODEPENDANT SOLUTION: Stay in mediation and continue to work with someone who has repeatedly been abusive, dishonest and manipulative.

  • (His) Problem: Life is busy, kids and work take up time, I want my wife to change her attitude…
    (His) Solution: File for a “fake” divorce as he now calls it, move out with the ho, I move out, get my own place and hes throwing rocks at my window at 2 am while shes driving by, wondering where he is, because he wants me back, he was only “faking” a divorce. jackass.

    • ‘faking’ a divorce???? Oh, that must be another of those many things he decided to do without telling you about. Or maybe that’s what my ex thought was happening, when I turfed him out and he wanted to keep coming to the house whenever he wanted, whether I was home or not, to do his laundry (despite having machines in his new building). And expecting to go to MY sister and brother-in-law’s for the first long weekend of the summer, like always. And wanting to keep all our joint accounts and credit cards, because ‘it’s all family money’. And he kept trying to do this stuff for A YEAR after the separation. That must be what a fake divorce is like.

  • PROBLEM: There is something seriously wrong with my wife. Even though she is a stay-at-home mom with five children that she homeschools (i.e. doesn’t have much on her plate), she has absolutely no energy to get anything done for ME. The house is getting worse and worse. She isn’t catering to my every whim and sometimes dinner isn’t on the table at six when I come home from work. Oldest daughter confided that she is very, very worried and thinks mom is dying of cancer.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Seek medical attention for wife and take on some of the household duties. Begin working shorter hours and stop traveling for work. As one of the owners of the business you can do these things will you care for your wife and family. Assure daughter that you will get to the bottom of this and find out what’s going on.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Get angry because wife can’t make you the center of your world. Yell about housework. Start working longer hours and traveling more to get away from the problem. Never discuss the problem with oldest daughter who is planning to skip college because she will be needed to help raise the younger children when Mom dies. Take up long-distance running and then start fucking the “running buddy.”

    (During the divorce, my problem was diagnosed and treated. Freakface thought maybe we should get back together since the running buddy had dumped him and I was healthy again. Idiot.)

  • Problem: My wife is succeeding at her career and has a fancy title that I always wanted to have, she is making more money than me and traveling around the world. When she is home she is always tired and makes our children her priority. She never has time to workout and lose weight, and those extra pounds really bother me, because I can’t pretend she is one of those hot porn chicks that I like to constantly watch. Also, since I am constantly pressuring her to do all this kinky, porn sex things that I have learned from all the porn watching, she doesn’t really want have sex with me anymore (and definitively not the 8 times a week I require).

    Adult Solution: Suggest to that my wife find a new job that doesn’t require her to travel so much and where I don’t feel her success is a threat for my manhood (oh, wait, she figured that one out by herself and actually quit the job of a lifetime for me!), suggest we go to counseling for my porn addiction and work on our sex life. We can even work out together so she can finally lose the baby weight!

    Cheater Solution: Start an EA with my direct report report at work b/c she is bimbo and will never make more money than me and will never threaten my intellect. After my wife realizes there is an EA going on and confronts me about it, well, make it a physical one b/c she will accuse me of that anyway!!

    • 8 times a week?!?!?!?

      Hmmm. Once a king always a king; but once a knight’s enough!

    • Bella, I sure hope you got the great job back, or an even better one!

      • I am glad I left that job, timing couldn’t have been better actually. If I had stayed he probably would be fighting for custody of the kids (not that he would get it, but he would have tried, just to “make me pay” for having a successful career ) and I would have to be paying him alimony!!! The Universe was looking out for me in a way, so I don’t regret it and I like my current job. When the kids are a little older, I will definitively go back to that Company and hopefully work my way back to that position.

        And yes, notyou. I kid you not, ideally he would have liked it twice a day, every day, but he was willing to settle for 8 times a week. I always felt so ill-equipped in the sack, but now I realize that he was the one with the problem, not me!!

        • 8 times a week!

          at one point with STBX I think 8 times was the sum total for an entire year.

          OMG ! I can’t wait to get a life. 😉

  • PROBLEM: Man moves 300 miles away to live with girlfriend. Heavy historical debts making man depressed. Lack of friends making man depressed. Misses family. Long commute (1 hour) making man depressed, and tired all the time. Sexual disfunction making it unable to have satisfactory sex with girlfriend. Constant arguments regarding above.
    ADULT SOLUTION: Enter into debt management plan. Hang out with girlfriend’s friends or make own by joining a club. Think about moving closer to work or working from home. See the doctor about sexual disfunction. Go and see family regularly. See a therapist.
    CHEATER SOLUTION: Get into even more debt by online gambling. Borrow money from girlfriend to stop you going bankrupt, don’t tell her real reason why! Phone sex chat-lines when you get lonely. Shag a ho-worker in the toilet. Sign up to snapchat and send pictures of your dick to said ho-worker while your girlfriend watches X Factor (You can also receive explicit photos but beware you may also get pictures of cute bunnies from non-ho workers and inspirational quotes, beware of those). What the hell, sex text ho-worker too. Wait until girlfriend is asleep and wank off to said pictures (not the bunnies. That’s just weird) or call ho-worker and talk dirty to her down the phone (wait til her husband is asleep too for gods sake!). When ho-worker busy with her husband trawl the internet for porn, make sure you have a screensaver handy when girlfriends walks in or go to toilet for hours with I-pad citing constipation. Or have a long bath. Lock the door. Drink copious amount of alcohol or smoke dope. Even better take class A drugs. Don’t socialise but text girlfriend 100 times during the evening while she is out with her friends. Then blame girlfriend for everything. After all you did move 300 miles to live with her. What a lucky lucky woman she is to have such a committed partner.
    ACTUAL ADULT RESOLUTION: Run like the wind girlfriend
    ACTUAL CHEATER RESOLUTION: It’s no big deal. Hey, it was just sex and you are a prude anyway who constantly argues. Can I come back now please? It’s been 3 months now, seriously. WTF. I mean it. We were good together. I miss you. Even though it was all your fault. Come on, I moved here to be with you. You are lovely, even though you are opinionated and don’t support me. But we can work on that. We had communication problems. You are not so perfect you know. You made me feel bad about my gambling and all the things you bought me. I’ll show you I’ve changed if you just meet me. But only if you stop arguing with me and give me blow jobs in the toilet again ( oops sorry that wasn’t you). Yeah. Give me blow jobs in the toilet. Then we will have perfect relationship. Don’t be such a prude. Can I come back now? And please, please don’t tell her husband. He’s a right nutter who will break my legs. Ps: can I borrow some money? And you are not going to pursue me through courts either for other money I owe you right? Love you. You are an amazing person. One of a kind. I don’t believe it’s over xx

    • “We were good together. I miss you. Even though it was all your fault. Come on, I moved here to be with you. You are lovely, even though you are opinionated and don’t support me. But we can work on that. “

      Oh my goodness – I think these exact words have come out of my ex’s mouth. Once I finally learned what gas lighting was, and CL’s great advice about “sticking your head in the blender”, it was amazing to me to actually listen to what he was saying while he “apologized” and tried to make up. It was exactly like this…

  • Problem: My wife is pregnant. I don’t feel ready for fatherhood.
    Adult solution: Get over yourself. Step up to the plate. Recognise that everyone finds it daunting when their first child comes along. Support your wife and try to be the best father you can.
    Cheater solution: Send yourself emails saying you are being taken for granted. Reply to yourself, reminding yourself that you are like a god and deserve better.

    • Ok. This one got my attention! My CH only journaled. Replying to his own emails? Wow!

      • What, not ready for fatherhood? He could have thought about that before he spent 2 minutes having sex, while you oh yes you spend 9 – 10 month pregnant, get huge, and have a wonderful baby that you hope comes into the world with you and the daddy so happy they are their.

        Oh it was too much for him, too much, he didn’t think his 2 minutes would come to this!

        Bastardass

    • hahahaha o.m.g. — sending himself emails and then ANSWERING THEM! He really thinks he IS a god, fucking amazing. Jeez these people are insane!

  • Problem: Husband thinks he is the hardest working man in America. “No one appreciates how hard I work.” I mean, I just want to come home EVERY NIGHT,and bitch about work and how they “dun me wrong.” Then, I want to go in my home office , sneak in some online porn, followed by sitting on the couch, remote in hand and channel surfing, for HOURS, and ignore my wife and kids. When I finally make it to bed, my wife is not interested in sex AND is not interested in threesomes!!! Is that too much to ask??

    Adult solution: Share with wife what she could do to help. Finally make a decision to either quit my job and start my own company, or shut up and find ways to make positive, healthy changes at work. Spend time with wife after kids have gone to bed; accept her offer to go for a walk, sit outside ,or play cards

    Cheater Solution: Spend more and more time looking at porn, start pulling 1000’s out of the money market account on massage parlor whores, and then graduate to hooking up with strangers on Craigslist and the ever popular Ashley Madison.

  • Problem: Wife is a nice girl next door type who nurtures her family and can be a bit over the top with details. She tries to get a decent home cooked meal on the table most nights. She shops and cleans and does most of the household chores and yard work. Husband goes to work everyday ” works hard” and appears to bring home most of the bacon. Wife works part time on and off over the years doing chill are, cutting hair, working in shops , shuffles the kids to activities and volunteers. Husband comes home, sits on couch watches television, works on outside projects to earn extra cash, repairs household cars and appliances when needed. Couple rately goes on trips and goes out for date night once a week once kids are old enough to care for themselves. No arguments, like a lot of the same things. Music, movies etc…..shares an interest in science and photography. However……there seems to be a bit of a communication issue on the husbands part. Flash forward…..30 year relationship, 3 kids. All grown and,

    Adult solution: Wife…..you seem stressed and overworked. Want to talk about it? Husband: He does this and that and he’s such an idiot…..
    Wife: sounds like you need a change, maybe we should sell the house and downsize and you could start working for yourself again.
    Husband: but I worked so hard to build that company and he are going to crash it….fucking idiot!
    Wife: we’ll maybe you could offe r to buy out your part of the company and start fresh.
    Husband: he would never let that happen…..

    Cheater Solution: works nights and weekends writing programs and neglects relationship while during the day he goes out and fucks whores who he becomes friends with and gives all his on the side income too after telling wife he isn’t getting paid for his extra work. Gets in car accident with one and has to confess. Tells wife he has been doing this for over 15 years and feels like he is more comfortable hanging out with 20 something heroine addicts and gang members. He is helping them to get off the streets. This makes him feel important. And besides that…..he had a vision and he needs to lose everything. He is also one of them….he is family!

    Psycho much?

  • Problem: My wife doesn’t appreciate me. She thought I was charming at first! Just because I can’t hold a job…but who wants a job anyway? Just because I expect to be King of my castle, damn it! I am Latino and an only son! Just because lots of women find me charming, that Bitch has issues with me! Damn f*cking bitch is always so crabby after working full time job plus 2 part time jobs to pay bills! She won’t even keep the house as clean as I like. And…she expects help with the kids! Sheesh!
    Adult Solution: Get a job and work hard. Go to therapy to deal with entitlement issues. Work on sharing the load at home.
    Cheater Solution: Soak up attention/boink 20 year olds. Pour my heart out to 50 yr old former mistress. She understands me and wants me. She does anything I say. Hell! She had 4 abortions the year we lived together. My wife would never be so understanding of my need to be the King!

  • Problem: Wife “promised” when we were engaged that she would wear high heels and lingerie. (Actually she just said she likes to wear lingerie, which you interpreted as a promise that she would always wear it.) Then we have a child who is high-needs and has (diagnosed) sleep problems. Wife spends several hours every night trying to get toddler to sleep. Sometimes, she then comes out and wants to have sex with you, but she doesn’t always take the time to dress up first, although she does dress up on the rare occasions when the toddler falls asleep at a reasonable time.

    Adult Solution: Offer to take over bedtime at least half the time. Suggest your wife relax while you do bedtime and that she maybe get fancy for some “adult time” if she’s interested that evening. Take the initiative on a regular basis to hire a babysitter your wife is comfortable with, book a nice hotel for the evening for you and your wife, and pack the lingerie yourself. Take your wife out to a nice dinner and then to the hotel for a relaxing adult evening together.

    Cheater Solution: Go out for a “walk” while wife is putting toddler to bed and find whores on the corner to give you blow jobs. Then when wife comes out from putting the toddler to bed and wants to have sex, get mad at her. If she’s wearing lingerie, tell her it “isn’t flattering.”

  • Problem: Life feels boring. Personally owned business is thriving but coasting. No drama at work. Wife takes care of all household/pre-teen children needs. No real drama at home. Husband feels like a paycheck.

    Adult Solution: Talk to wife about feelings of boredom. Ask her to join you in different activities and make arrangements for kids. Realize that you can’t necessarily leave your children at home 3 or 4 times a year to travel to conferences and bring your wife, but could do it once or twice a year, if you ask your mother to stay with the kids. Try to find something that both you and your wife might enjoy doing together, not just doing what you athletically like to do and leave wife behind because she can not physically do those things.

    Cheater Solution:First, get into porn – going online at end of every work day and whenever wife is out. Second, go to strip clubs every week, but hide it from your wife for several years, because she wouldn’t understand how you “need” variety. Third, decide to have affair with married family friend to fend off boredom. She is pretty and funny and smart, and very flirty and really into me. Have married friend come to your home for holiday parties and have her stay at your vacation home so you can sneak little glances, and maybe brush against each other while no one is looking. Drink heavily while she is around and repeat same stories over and over because she always laughs every time. It’s great that she comes without her husband on vacation with group of friends (everyone else with their spouses except for her) and then as soon as wife leaves to fly home to take care of kids, go directly to a conference and have AP meet you there. Complain that wife has to go home to take care of kids, but make no effort to get more childcare. Have unprotected sex, because “hey, she is a friend!” (She couldn’t possibly have std from her prior affair that you learned about) Spend two years in false reconciliation, so you can have cake (just tone down the PA affair with friend to EA – no one should tell you who can and can’t be your friend, especially your “pick me dancing” wife.) Don’t go to any counseling, because “statistics show that 70% of couples who enter into marriage counseling wind up separated and there is no way you want to end up separated.”

    • Lake, I had to look twice, I was trying to figure out how I wrote this without remembering (except my ex’s self employment was not as profitable as yours)! Yes indeed, the porn, the need for “variety,” the affair with “family friend,” having her in the home and our vacation home so they could have some sickening secret thrills (who does that???), meeting at conferences, unprotected sex…..wow.

  • problem: after years of nagging and complaining, I finally convince my wife to relocate herself and the children to my country of origin (where only I speak the language). I will quit my job so I can devote myself full time to writing a vegetarian cookbook/creating films/making millions from my blog/go back to school/start a business – I am a very focused person! My wife will work to support me in this, manage the children and the house and also learn to speak the new country’s language so she can find work here. Uh oh! None of my endeavors have been successful. Moving back to my home country has not made me happy. My wife is starting to buckle under the strain of living in a foreign country and trying to financially support us all. Money is really tight.

    Adult Solution: Admit that things have not worked out for me as I had hoped. Start looking for work. Start spending a little more quality time with my wife. Start communicating with her about my failures and insecurities. Put my marriage and my family first, for a change.

    Cheater Solution: The reason I am not successful is because of my wife. She has never supported me. Moving back to my home country and working so I can focus on my projects, does not count. I will emotionally withdraw from my wife and children while at the same time make it clear that everything that goes wrong is her fault. It’s been a year since we moved to this new country – why can’t she speak the language fluently?!! I am going to tell her that she is lazy. I have a secret stash of money that I never told her about so I am going to spend it on me, me, me while also helping myself to the family finances. I will have affairs with a string of women including my daughter’s godmother. These women all understand me in a way that my wife doesn’t. I will dump my wife with no explanation given. This is all her fault anyway!

  • Problem: Wifey goes back to school to get her degree so she can help out with finances and be home when the children are home. She writes a lot of papers. Even though I’ve been unemployed five times for upwards of two years each during our marriage, this is going to ruin the balance at home, where I go to the gym, then to work (if I’m working) and home to a nice dinner, while wifey does all the housework, yard work, bookkeeping, parenting, and part time job that keeps us in health insurance.

    Adult Solution: Talk with wifey about my fears about the money she is selfishly spending on herself, and how it will affect my 1950’s view of a woman’s role in the marriage.

    Cheater Solution: Decide wifey is defiant, call her “frigid” behind her back and then fuck my “getting divorced” howroker. Move in together while still married and get mean when the kids aren’t on board with replacement mommy.

  • Problem: I’m bored. My wife works two jobs to support my lifelong dream of owning a Harley. I have no male friends because I rarely accept invitations from anyone when an invitation is extended and I NEVER invite anyone to do anything with me. I leave all the social planning up to my wife but she tends to enjoy family oriented activities instead of bar hopping or going to smoky pool halls…she kind of a square that way! My wife does love to attend formal dinner dances (and will dance all night!) but I am not comfortable on the dance floor. While SHE’S been busy working two jobs I decided to quit MY job in a very profitable profession…found something that was more to my liking but took a $20,000.00 paycut in the process. I was supposed to find a part-time job to supplement my income but with my wife working two jobs I figured “why bother”? I needed the spare time to take the Harley out for a spin or hit the trails on the 4 wheeler. Still bored, though…something seems to be missing but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

    Adult Solution: I should have opened up my mouth and had some honest, open communication with my wife! When I was feeling bored I should have put forth a little effort and imagination to come up with some ideas to breathe new life into our marriage. I should have booked us into a B and B for the weekend or made arrangements for the two of us to take the train to Boston for dinner and a show. I should have shown her that I appreciated all her efforts to help me make my own dreams come true. I should have shown her how much I valued her and our relationship. I should have been willing to work with her to save 17 years of a pretty decent marriage…and most of all I should have been trusting that she would have done everything in her power to help me feel happy and content.

    Cheater’s Solution: I allowed myself to become involved with a married woman at work. To be fair, she was in a miserable marriage and I felt it was my duty to rescue her from that terrible situation. Besides, she is a flirty, fun, sloppy drunk party “girl”…even if she is in her early 40’s. And I made some new friends!! I get to hang out at the bar with her and all of her girlfriends…too bad none of them ever bring their husbands or boyfriends with them. Sometimes it feels kind of weird to be the only guy in a group of women who are letting it all hang out. I tried to hide it all from my wife but she was more astute and tenacious at getting to the truth than I thought she would be…and yeah, it kind of sucked for my wife when she walked into our bedroom and caught the me and the girlfriend in our bed. Oh, the drama that followed…I sure wasn’t feeling bored anymore! But my wife, being the square that she is, put an end to all that by kicking me to the curb and filing for a divorce. She never was any fun…

    Cheater’s Solution:

    • Seems like the Harley is the preferred motorcycle make for a cheater…

      Your story is so similar to mine. You did a much better job of articulating it than I did. When I read “something seems to be missing but I can’t quite put my finger on it” I shuddered as I’ve heard that lame line so many times in the last six months.

      • I hear you, KitKat! But when my soon to be XH said something was missing I knew he was speaking the truth. Somewhere along the way he lost his honor, his integrity, his morals, his self-respect…all the qualities I loved most about him were just gone. He knew it, I knew it and I think that knowledge just made it so much easier for him to engage in his selfish, cowardly behavior! LOL…I think you may be right about the Harley!!

  • Drillin’ down through all this slop they spew. There is no cheater solution – just cheater pollution. Such a sewer of excuses…

    • Nain, “cheater pollution” has got to be in the vocab section! Perfect!

  • Problem: My wife is lazy, she has 3 kids, a part time job and a house to run, and I am so super important and my job is so demanding I can’t help her. She forgets to pick up pegs of the ground, water the pot plants and clean out the fridge so I helpfully remind her to do these jobs rather than lift a finger. I pay her no attention and she is not into sex with me.
    Adult solution: Talk to wife, scale back work and sport commitments, encourage (rather than discourage) her to get paid help around the house, or help her myself. Pay her attention and make her feel desirable.
    Cheater solution: Fuck dirty fucking whore (DFW) from the squash club.

  • Problem: Wife is pregnant! And they’ve been trying for over a year. Husband panics at the thought of being a father, of being tied down.
    Adult solution: Confide fears to wife and proactively seek counseling to assuage unfounded fears.
    Cheater solution: Screw a co-worker getting married in a couple of weeks, try to convince her not to go on with the marriage (she gets married). A week after she’s back from her honeymoon, they screw again. Cheater confesses to wife when baby is 6 weeks and OW confesses to her husband of 6 months since she was afraid wife would tell her husband. Non-chump husband throws OW out IMMEDIATELY and filed for divorce.

    That was the first “problem.” Two other affairs didn’t need problems – cheater solution could now be pursued using any excuse.

  • oh gosh, I have so many..

    Problem: Even though I work a lot we never seem to have enough money for retirement and the fact the government is stealing all our money, I need to work forever and ever to make sure it all goes into savings. I realize we have no debt but we cannot take vacations (or buy new bar stools) even though I’ve worked for same company for 32 years because it’s a bonus-only company and every hour I work means more money for the future. More, more money! weee. I don’t care that we’ll be too old to spend it all I have amassed. Besides, since 9/11 I can’t fly anywhere.

    Adult Solution: Take a little time off and take your old bride on an old-fashioned honeymoon since we never had one. Maybe a whole week! Maybe even drive!

    Cheater Solution: Fuck wife’s best friend for 2 yrs, divorce and lose 1/2 your stinking money in a divorce, which you always thought would be your worst financial disaster.

    Just have to end it with HA HA HA

  • Problem: I moved my family across the border and they’re sad. I’ve decided to work with my mommy far away and not in my field and my wife and kids are crushed. My wife goes so far as to suggest I’m a failure since I have not achieved the pot of gold I have promised for 14 years. The nerve. My kids rally and succeed despite their tears, my wife finds volunteering and work to fill every day despite throwing up and sobbing and having to navigate public transportation in a new city. My mommy and her employees are great at being compassionate and ethical and kind – if you’re a billable client. My best friend and other business partner is a blowhard who promises me and my wife riches and my kids exotic trips – and never follows through. Everyone is so sad 🙁 even though I spend 14 hours a day at work but come home whistling and smiling non stop when I do pop in. The umbilical cord between me and mommy has grown back. As a result, I’m a Canadian scientific miracle.
    Adult solution: be a man, address the sadness, scoop up my wife and kids and tell them their feelings matter. Its what theyve begged for, they want to be heard. Get counselling for the whole family. Stop fucking whistling, I’m not even good at it.
    What I did: connected with my mommy’s fave employee (and eerie physical twin!) because she got me. Even though she was a married cheater with a pile of kids, she always made time for me and believed I was a rich successful CEO with an ungrateful wife, because that’s what I told her, and I often wore a suit when I saw this hillbilly. Impressive, right? We were going to be the power couple in our industry, and brady bunch our kids, once she changed out of her cargo pants and I could take her out in public – yikes. She and I texted 24/7, even during my lying marriage counselling (great cover!!) because it was so titillating and super important. When my wife left the country and went back home for vacation with the kids, I pretended I was faithful and committed so she would come back and be legally stuck and unable to leave again, even though she suspected something – she wanted to believe me! Then I dumped and fired the howorker and recommitted to my marriage – wtf? Does my wife not see I picked her and we are broke so she can’t leave? That I made all the choices for us? She’s ungrateful and even my mommy won’t talk to her now that I’ve cheated – my wife is mean and not a billable client, so no one has time to sympathize! I mean, I dumped my girlfriend for my wife, and she’s still pissy. Sheesh.

    • Your “Canadian medical miracle” with his umbilical cord growing back made me laugh out loud. Although you get full credit for identifying this phenomenon, I regret to inform you that he isn’t a one off. Now that you’ve clued me in as to where to look, I can confirm the same regrowth in my all- American EX. I will consult with the Nobel committee to see if your discovery makes you eligible for any prizes.

      • Lol. So it’s confirmed that he’s not so special after all, just as I suspected!

        • Isn’t it funny when they think that dumping their AP is an actual action that should get them browny points? That and choosing you over their AP? (We are just so lucky because they are just so damn special!!)Mine thought he deserved all kinds of kudos for not screwing her anymore and not taking a very high paying job in which he would come in contact with her.

          And still I left…Too bad, so sad!

  • Problem: My GF has taken me back 3 times even though I’ve been emotionally abusive. I’ve promised to love her and buy a house with her and get married. I’ve told her she is the most beautiful and exciting person I’ve ever met! Since we’ve been together (again) I’ve been feeling like we don’t quite click and something is off in our relationship.

    Adult Solution: Tell my gf I’ve been feeling like something is off and either try together to work on it or admit is isn’t going to work. Be honest with her about my feelings. Either break up for good or try diligently to work it out.

    Cheater’s Solution: Join polyamory websites, go on dates behind my gf’s back. Hope she doesn’t notice I’ve checked out. Hope she can be a mind-reader. Give her “hints” like showing her a house I am thinking of buying where there’s no room for her. Setup a meetup site she doesn’t know about and join singles meetups. Schedule dates with other women. Treat my gf like a backup plan. Delete my FB account and setup a new one with the relationship status of “it’s complicated” because I want lots of sympathy from the women I’d like to hookup with, while stringing along my gf to be there for me in case things don’t work out as planned.

  • Problem: One partner feels there isn’t enough sex in the relationship.

    Adult Solution: Let’s go see a counselor who specializes in couples therapy/sexuality. No? Maybe we should get some books that deal with the problem. Not that either? Are you sure? I’d be happy to do either…

    Cheater Solution: *creates Ashley Madison account and screws the one low-class, desperate housewife that is pathetic enough to meet him, without any protection, of course*

  • Problem: I am running out of steam in my current business, so I buy a new farm (millions of dollars) – all borrowed finance, while first farm goes on the market, luckily sells in six months, but very stressful bridging finance with no guarantees of top dollar for beautiful third generation farm I worked my butt off to buy off reluctant parents -while amazing, loving, loyal, fun, sexy chump is at her brother’s wedding with kids overseas (first overseas trip in twenty years.) Chump goes along with it, moves from her forever home in less than five weeks, selling her beloved pedigree Holstein dairy herd, and effectively being mad unemployed. Chump is very sad, and expresses this on arrival at the new farm in the spirit of communication and honesty, but discusses how she realised if he did this, he must have been very unhappy, so understands him. Chump is very lovely and tries to put everyone else’s feelings and needs before her own. Chump gets counselling and finds first job in nearly twenty years that isn’t self-employment. Chump has no name on any real estate titles – and is not a beneficiary of the family trust that runs the businesses. (In our country, you get half after three years of cohabitation, but a trust can deny access to those assets.) Super-chump begs you to go to MC, you say all is fine. Chump goes to MC alone for several sessions, wondering why the heck she is there.

    Adult Solution: Talk to chump, tell her how you feel, if not able to, if don’t want to, leave. Now. Chump is desperate to know what you are thinking and feeling. Either way. Chump is exhausted from working 60-70 hour weeks and thinks any small problems are all in her head and she must be a screwy bitch. Cheater and chump are still in love, still having super sex, and tell each other how much they still love each other, chump feels relieved that the main part of her life is fine, her super relationship of more than twenty years.

    Cheater Solution: Chump is busy establishing a new career and still doing all the housework, cooking and parenting. This new farm is huge and takes a heap of hours to run, no money (like chump said, I-told-you-so, damn!) I will start fucking her childhood friend (my multiple cheating, no morals, no ethics, no empathy whore of an ex-GF) I will do this while chump is at work, and I am “working such long hours and am so exhausted,” in chump’s houses, in chumps cars, while chump-and-my children are in the same house, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Ms Skanky Pants will continue her friendship with chump for the whole fifteen months we are fucking, even going to weekends at our bach with her, without me sometimes, spending one-on-one time with her a lot, laughing, drinking chump’s wine, eating chumps’s gourmet cooking, without lifting a finger or contributing to the food or wine. I am entitled to some happy, and I won’t tell chump I am unhappy, in fact, when she digs, I tell her everything is just fine.Chump believes me every time, good old chump, always reliable. Ms Skanky Pants tells me I am allowed to be happy, and everyone is doing it, “we are just having fun,” all-the-while she tells her family that she is finally getting married (no long term relationships ever) at 42, and buys a white wedding gown (cheater is unaware of this until after D-day, cheater actually tells her he loves chump, and doesn’t know what he is doing, or why.)

  • This is too fun not to play along:

    Problem: My wife’s boss / friend just got caught embezzling from work and she’s going to prison. My wife is beside herself in grief, trying to understand her boss that she thought she knew and she has to put in extra hours to help out the company, police and FBI.

    Adult Solution: I’m going to give my wife a shoulder to cry on, maybe plan a weekend away so we can reconnect from all the hours she’s been putting in, and I’ll try to have dinner ready for her at least once a week.

    Cheater Solution: I can’t believe she’s upset with her ex-boss, this makes me mad that she doesn’t see it my way. The neighborhood dog walker understands me, I’m going to fuck her and save her from her shitty marriage to a drug dealer because she’ll appreciate me.

  • PROBLEM: wife suspects that husband has been with someone else and confronts him but receives denial and accepts it. Emotional turmoil builds. Wife still suspects husband has been with someone but now concedes it may be with a man not a woman so she confronts him receives denial and accepts it. Emotional turmoil is now at a peak, wife cracks telling husband she can’t put her finger on it but she is done with his shit and wants a divorce.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Confess if you need to and face up to you shit like a man. Aim to restore what you can and accept it if the relationship ends as a result of you actions.

    CHEATERS SOLUTION: Encourage wife to attend MC for issues with unqualified fellow church members, Proclaim to wife that you love her and will do anything to make your marriage work. Proclaim to be fee of all porn or anything that would be contrary to your christian persona. Wait till son catches you indulging in homosexual porn and confides in his mother, and when she confronts you on this continue to deny any wrong doing till she put you out and then when confronted my church eldership confess to long term sexual self indulgent behavior. refuse to take responsibility like a man move back to live with mummy while claiming it is now all in your past and that everyone including you wife should just pretend like it didn’t happen. as it was not your fault a demonic spirit made you do it.

  • Cheaters point of view

    Problem: I managed to get my SO to marry me after 12 years of harping on it. Jeez, I almost died in the hospital before she’d marry me, she is so selfish. Finally I had my ticket. Then the bitches mother died and she stopped giving a shit about my needs. WTF is the point if she’s going to feel like she wants to die, I have to take over paying the bills and she no longer cleans up after me? How am I supposed to stay sober enough to keep a job if she checks out on me? Who’s going to take care of meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I never loved her but she was supposed to love me forever. WTF, how did I misjudge my manipulations so badly? I am the Martyr Man, how dare she expect me to take care of myself?

    Adult solution: Step up and take care of your wife, the one and only time she ever needed you in 17 years. Recommend she get a therapist, maybe make her an appointment. Hold her. If you can’t manage that, tell her honestly that you want out and leave.

    Cheater’s solution: I found someone who will APPRECIATE me and tell me what a bitch my wife is and how awesome I am, I am a white fucking knight and my wife totally sucks… When my wife found out I tell her she checked out on me and I begged her to get out of that chair! The chair she sat in to work every day…Then I refused to divorce her and attacked her and got her arrested. That was a sweet deal, got me MORE control. Too bad that whole pulling a gun on her and pretending to want to kill myself backfired. She really is a bitch, sending me for a mental health evaluation? If I wanted to kill her or me I would have, how come she didn’t KNOW that? Fucking bitch.

    • Dat, your story always gives me chills. You are one tough lady. I really admire you.

  • wait, I’m not done playing…
    too many OWs, too many stories to list…

    PROBLEM: I can’t seem to catch a break with keeping professional employment. Every boss I’ve had was either an incompetent imbecile or a racist (yeah, English is my first language and I do have a college degree, but you know, the stuff about insubordination was totally made up, I’m not a confrontational guy- umm, no you are.)
    I don’t have any friends and my own family barely tolerates me so I can’t even compare my notes with anyone but you’ll just have to take my word for it.
    ADULT solution: I’m going to explore in therapy what my issues are and where they stem from. Girlfriend seems to benefit from therapy and highly recommends it so ill give it a try. I cannot be coincidental that I keep getting fired and have nothing to do with it (those racists again.)
    I’m sure once I’ll start the process of self discovery, I’ll gain insight and matters should improve.
    Cheater solution: wait a minute, did she say therapy? Fuck her, my stupid whiny controlling girlfriend is not the boss of me and she has no idea what she’s talking about. There’s nothing wrong with me. They’re all racists out there. If I had 1 friend I’d ask him about this but no one seems to appreciate my sparkling personality. They’re probably racist too.
    Besides, there’s this website called “fuck buddy locally” and for a few hundred dollars, I can not only have a friend but a fuck buddy. It sounds like a splendid solution to all this.
    If girlfriend ever finds out, I’ll gaslight the shit out of her and deny, deny, deny.

  • Problem: I’ve met someone at work I’m attracted to, and after we had an EA with a lot of sexting, we started sleeping together. I’m married, but she initially says she’s okay with that because she knows my place is with my family. Now, though, she wants more of my time, and my wife wants to spend time with me doing the kinds of things we’ve done as a couple–like eat meals together.

    Adult Solution: Choose one of the following: tell wife I’ve been having an affair and that I will have a fair divorce settlement or break up with the other woman, tell my wife about the affair, and go to counseling and do what it takes to earn her trust again.

    Cheater Solution: Spend $6K in money that my company gave me to reimburse me for the costs of my education (which I’m paying for via loans) on OW so she’s happy. But because I don’t want my wife to feel left out or otherwise get suspicious, I’ll bring home take-out for her and tell her I’m too sick to eat.

  • Problem: Decide that everything else is more fun than being at home. Go shooting at every opportunity for days/weeks at a time, sailing, surfing, playing hockey, coffees with female “work” colleague (there have been many many over the years) every second day, spend weeks which turns into months away from home. Sext multiple female friends/colleagues. Flirt with everything that is in a skirt including my best friend. Come home with bites on my neck and tell my wife to just get over it, nothing happened. Become alienated from your children and wife. When you wife says no to the 10th trip away in 2 months say I don’t have anything in common with you or the kids and why should I stay at home and do things with you and the kids that I don’t like.

    Adult solution: Work on why I feel the need to escape constantly into being a “single” man when I have a family at home. Spend time with my children and wife to develop a good relationship with them. Value the time I spend with my family. Work on my issues around why I feel the need to disrespect my wife with other women.

    Cheater solution: Have multiple affairs over 20 plus years (emotional/?physical) and finally clean out the house while my wife and kids are at work and school, walk into my wife’s work tell her I’ve packed my stuff and leaving you and walk out the door. Pick the kids up from school, dump them at home, tell them that your mum and I are going in different directions and I’m leaving and leave them there to cry. Go over to ho-workers (which had been going on for about 18 months) house because he needs somebody to talk to. Tell your wife a few weeks later that it was her fault because she wore him down.

    • Oh and when my wife suggested marriage counselling a few weeks before I ran off tell her why should I have to sit there and listen to some idiot telling me what to do!!

      • Oh dear God Jode70 what a shit you had. I keep thinking about whether it might have been worse or better to have someone who refuse therapy or someone like mine who sat there with a look of contentment that he did not want anything and was doing fine and should be praise for just sitting his ass in the chair—what a waste of time. Either way it sucks and I hope you are over your misery making creepy man.

      • Because no one is the boss of him! You are well rid of this selfish idiot.

  • PROBLEM: I have reached a transition point in my life. Kids are all almost grown and planning their lives. I have had stable employment for almost 30 years in a profession where I don’t feel I receive the consistent accolades and adoration I am due. I have a hobby which I have tried to turn into a second career and have as yet been unsuccessful, mostly due to my inability to put in the sustained hard work and effort that is required. My wife has invested a lot of time in the raising of our 4 children, while working a full time job and taking care of practically all of the day to day responsibilities because I only do what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it, and complain about that because it takes time away from me doing whatever I want to do. In order to alleviate the “stress” of not having all the money that I want to spend the way I want and to bring me out of my frequent depressions, my wife also starts doing my work that I bring in home so I can have time to sit in front of the television or pursue my hobby, in which she has invested a sum of money in order to help me become successful. I remain depressed because I see the rest of my life as being less than what I had anticipated it would be.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Admit I have a problem with depression and finally seek counseling for it and to address passive-aggressive behaviors. Speak honestly to wife about natural feelings associated with empty-nest syndrome and the natural fear and frustration with respect to getting older and feeling that I have not done everything I could or should have with my life. Allow her to support me and perhaps seek counseling to make our marriage better and stronger as we both transition into a new phase of our lives.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Connect with childhood friends on Facebook, reliving my childhood and halcyon days when I believed myself to be headed for fame and fortune and the envy of all and sundry. Begin fucking former childhood friend and become angry when children refuse to accept her. Blame wife for cheating because, while I was busy watching porn, reliving my childhood on FB with childhood playmates and watching sports on television, my wife pursued her own interests to occupy her time, thereby making her unavailable to me when I was ready for her to be available. Blame wife for any perceived lack of sex even though I would not come to bed, not even when she would appear before me dressed in provocative lingerie asking me to come to bed because I was too busy looking at porn on the internet. Blame her for the break up of the marriage because she wouldn’t have sex with me in the morning, even though I refused to get up early enough to enable her to do so. I wanted her to be late for work and have sex with me on my schedule. She’s so selfish, which is another reason I needed to cheat with skanky minister, who understands me and is my soulmate.

    • I wonder if the whole “relive the glory days” of childhood, but especially high school or college, “when I believed myself to be headed for fame and fortune” and was the smartest kid in the room (or football captain, prom king or queen, the “bad boy” all the girls loved, the beautiful 17-year old) is not an essential part of the cheater grandiosity. They seem to miss the point that most of us are never “famous” outside our little circle (and from what I’ve seen, real fame and fortune are no guarantee of being happy). Even if the cheater is not drawn to FB and old “friends,” there is that sense that there was some guaranteed life out there that they deserve and somehow missed. And being massive blameshifters, they imagine that it’s the partner’s fault that they aren’t still young, good looking, rich or famous.

      • It’s as if life itself gave them a massive “narcissistic injury,” and they have to blame someone, usually a Chump.

      • Spot on with your explanation of their obsession with the “glory days”. My STBX, when he was drinking, would pull out all these recruitment letters from colleges for football and ruminate on what could have been (didn’t end up playing in college). He was never satisfied with the life he made for himself instead and of course, that was mainly my fault.

        Every time he sees Tom Brady parading Giselle around, he thinks that should have been him. So to compensate, he took up with Ye Old Ex-Porn Star. Because gorgeous international super model = husband-stealing ex-porn star with tattoos of monkeys fucking in bondage. Ole!

        • Tom Brady cheated on his preggers girlfriend to be with Giselle, right? Ex-porn star with tattoos of monkeys fucking in bondage? That’s hysterical!

          And I love the glory days too – when I look in the mirror I see 45 years of darn good fun and 3 pregnancies and 15 more pounds – when h looks in the mirror, 20 years of not being an athlete are magically replaced by the image of himself 20 pounds ago. He also sees a super successful entrepreneur. His mirror is fucked.

  • PROBLEM: My husband is sexually attracted to other men. I knew this when I married him, in fact the thought that I was rescuing him was a large part of the attraction. He doesn’t cheat on me, look at gay pornography, or in any other way act on his feelings toward men, but it preys on my mind, and our sex life is not what I would like it to be. Admittedly, having two small children and my persistent body-image issues have played a part there too.

    ADULT SOLUTION 1: Tell my husband that I think we both made a mistake marrying and seek an amicable divorce putting the children’s needs first. He has been my best friend for years and I know he wants me to be happy. If we divorce, maybe we can both be happy, and our love for one another will continue, though not as man and wife. We could still spend a lot of time together with the children, and even with each other as friends.

    ADULT SOLUTION 2: Tell my husband about my concerns and try to work out our problems through counselling. Accept the consequences of my decision to marry this man as he has accepted the consequences of his decision to marry me.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Refuse sex to my husband. Get offended that he eventually gives up trying and take it as confirmation that he does not find me attractive.. Have a year-long affair with my boss, a manly man who makes me feel wanted. Lend my boss $200k. Assuage my guilt by telling my husband about the affair, but blow off marriage counselling and lie about various details of the affair. Decide to stay with husband because he’s a good father, my main emotional support and a decent provider, telling him “Intimacy will be a long time coming back.” Get angry with him constantly. Pretend that the affair never happened. Make sure to clear my browser history every night and frequently go out for long periods of time without letting my husband know my plans. Give him the silent treatment if, for example, he is seated at a dinner party beside an attractive man and seems to enjoy talking to him. NEVER EVER mention either the affair or my husband’s sexuality.

    • And I’m pretty sure the end-game will be along the lines of “Tell everyone my husband is divorcing me, even though I don’t want a divorce, because he’s decided what he really wants is a man.” Since far more people than she imagines know about the affair and the loan (which has not been and never will be paid back), that should be kind of fun to watch.

      • Let her say what she wants, ANR. You’re a good person who didn’t deserve her disrespectful behavior. End of story.

        • Thanks, Lily Bart! I’m chumpy enough to have trouble believing that, but I’m getting better, slowly but surely.

          • I think Adult Solution 2 above would probably have led to Adult Solution 1. That would have hurt, but I would still be able to respect her and have her in my life. Maybe I’m just stupid, but I really did love her. I still do, sometimes. 🙁

            Think I forgot to take my meds this morning.

            • Hang in there, ANR. It’s a long road to recovery after this hell when you actually have a heart, and crying is emotional detox.

              If someone could invent the “shortcut to emotional healing” pill, they could make millions. Hell, I’d pop them like Tic-Tacs. 🙂

  • Wife really has an issue that within minutes of coming home I start drinking and tell everyone to shut up as I am watching tv. Then my job gets offshored so right after getting a new job, wife gets cancer. She needs cancer treatment I just got my new job.

    Adult solution: Move wife and kids, take her to her appointments, be there as a husband.

    Cheater solution: Cheat on wife, tell whorehey that you are already getting a divorce because the wife can’t move away from her doctors. When wife finds out, the first thing out of mouth is “you ruined everything”

      • I am getting better he was such a narcissist I didn’t see how ugly it was until I found this site. Thank god. 🙂

        My girls don’t talk to him at all, one is going to school to be a social worker too, he won’t be able to pull anything on her or her sister.

        • Good. From this and your second story, they sure as hell should not talk to him. Ever.

        • I think narcism is the leading factor shared by all of our cheaters. It boggles the mind.

          I’m glad you’re getting better.

    • “You ruined everything”

      WTF? That belongs right at the top of the ‘dumb shit cheaters say’ list. What an arsehole!

      • The last words my ex said before I ran for the car was “You destroyed my life, what more do you want” in a rage. You know, because I refused to remain married to him any longer… it’s how they think. NOTHING is ever their responsibility, he cheated and I refused to remain married to him but that’s my fault, I should accept it.

        • What a fucker. My wife is outraged at the thought of getting only 50% of the matrimonial property on division. Because … um, because she’s special, I guess.

  • I have another one.

    Cheating on wife living with whorehey even though it is tearing family apart. Daughter wants to drive to our home where I deserted wife and bring the guy who wants to marry her, they are going to cook dinner for me and my wife.

    Adult solution: First of all, don’t have a goddamn affair. Show up act like a human and meet the guy who is very nervous about actually asking you for your daughters hand in marriage.

    Cheater solution: Fuck them all, be a no show, don’t call, don’t answer the phone, when you hear later your daughter ran out of the house crying after her and the guy cooked dinner for you and your wife all day long, don’t call her either, in fact don’t call her when you hear later she was in a kayak accident and had to be rescued from the middle of a river and almost drown.

    • Beach,

      (((HUGS))). Your husband? He should be the strange smell coming from the trunk of a car. What a fucking shit-faced donkey’s asshole – and I apologize for the insult to donkeys and their assholes.

  • Sorry I was swearing so much O.O it is just the f word is his attitude, he does not care at all, he really has no remorse, thought process to thinking like a human … I swear a first grader would know what he did was not nice. You know, kids get put in a time out to think about things that are not nice. Why can’t there be a cheater time out, some corner in the sewer, that is flooding, with toilet paper going by in the water, and smelly….

    • And don’t forget about the difference between “nice” and “kind.” All he had to do for a few hours–be nice.

  • Problem: My fiance is going into a PhD program. It was a hard year living together and she is telling me that I should not go with her.
    Solution: Listen to her when she says you should not go because you will be miserable and that we are not doing that well to handle it. Be honest about what you really want in life and who you want to be with. Or, if you really want to go and be with your finance, take her up on discussing how it will be for you and then take the discussion seriously. Or, take her up on all the discussions on how to make it better
    Cheater’s response: Beg her to take me along even though all I do is complain about the derailment of my career (I am between jobs in my current residence) and the shitty life it will be for me in a college town. Take every empathic response from her and throw it in the toilet. Continue drinking and lying about the fact that you have a drinking problem (I had an evaluation done they said it was alcohol abuse not alcoholism! I can handle this on my own! Bug off!). Flirt with anything in a skirt. Act like the good Jewish boy who listens and cares about everyone else but his wife—everyone will think she is the problem here!!! When the pregnant married president of the birth organization has a crush on me have an emotional/ physical affair and then talk shit and lies about my wife for her to spread like wild fire in her desperate housewife/ lady of leisure community where your wife thinks she is supported!!! The bring her into your home and have your wife humiliated by cooking and hosting her and her family all the while being subjected by her weird domestic competition! (She was playing house in my house–gross). Then when married dog wants to leave her husband—tell you you don’t want that so she gets mad and plots revenge!

    To be fair here is a chumps response:

    To the problem above: Believe with all your heart that he loves you and is the good person he and everyone says he is even though you experience otherwise! Understand that your spouse is depressed (has a long history of depression) and feeling lost and explain away all the shitty treatment! When things really get bad and you are asking for a divorce every week (this is before D-day!) don’t make a move until he agrees that you should divorce because of course he is who he says he is and you love each other (He never did agree).

    Thank God I am out of that relationship.

    Pray for me and my son that I should heal from this terror and be a rock for him.

  • ooo, just one more, because I’m seeing a pattern.

    Problem: Wife gets cancer diagnosis. Have to tell everybody, against wife’s wishes for privacy on the matter, but but – *I* need the support of pity/sympathy/horror vote. Thankfully, since I can’t deal with the diagnosis and 8 wks of radiation, I will send wife away for 8 wks for treatment. Besides, while I’m home ‘alone’, I get a lot of dinner invitations cuz of the sympathy vote and besides, wife is just fine doing her best all alone during treatment as she’s met so many nice folks in the chemo/rad sitting room. They play puzzles together!

    Adult Solution: Discuss ‘who gets to know private stuff’. Bring the dogs out to visit wife during treatment. Take her to lunch. Realize it’s not a death sentence and all will be fine. Maybe send her some flowers so she knows you’re thinking of her.

    Cheater Solution: Declare wife’s diagnosis as something to be afraid of. Maybe she won’t take care of MeMeMe when I get sick! What to do what to do….Fuck wife’s best friend who is 10 yrs younger and actually makes breakfast….something wife never did.

    (I’m sorry for the sick humor but I find it disgusting that so many spouses will up and leave their spouses with a C diagnosis, that is fully recoverable from. I can only assume he wanted somebody younger and healthier to take care of him in old age)

  • Oh I have another one, there are so many which one to chose.

    Since cheating the family truck I just took is costing a lot of money for gas so I will threaten wife for her car. But then my youngest daughter says she will sell me her car, I get the wife to pay for it, it is my money, I am master of my crap decisions. But the car is older and I see my daughter was really ripped off, if she had her dad with her when she bought it maybe he could have told her it was not a good car to buy, but I in my smart thinking was not talking to her for a very long time.

    Adult solution: First buy the car yourself from your daughter, then tell her it is a nice car, etc.

    Cheater solution: Tell her you have to do a lot of work on it, then tell her about how sometimes the radio stays on when you turn the car off (which is part of the cheater plan) Which is, a car fire, go to del taco and when people say a car alarm is going off, sit and eat the cheap tacos. Go out to the car, it is on fire, oh no. Call wife tell her (yes he did) to call the insurance company (which she said, you call you have the info in our family truck)

    (When he got the money for the car, it was mailed to our home as he is STUPID, it never ends, and I paid bills with it, he was very angry.

    If I had found this site sooner I would be single now, better late than never.

  • My wife did the sitting there thing until I said things that were critical of her. Then, two weeks later she exploded at our younger son and me and said she was being abused, and that I should go alone, as I was the one with the problem

  • I am assuming from the conversation I had tonight this is my X ministers view on this

    PROBLEM: Husband is considered bisexual because he fathered three children, and he has only been with other men over the past 8 years of a 20 year relationship. Because husband is doing all the church asks of him and is in their eyes owning up his issues even though he has not shown any remorse of respect to his wife although he concedes it is not her fault, they consider he is worth their effort and it is hoped that at some point in the future he will face his issues on a real level and be healed.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Support both sides and enable an amicable separation with the move towards as heathy a divorce as possible. Listen to both sides and well where possible just listen. With out agenda

    CHEATER SOLUTION: your are entitled to be upset your husbands behavior is disgusting and would make me vomit but we have hope for him and your marriage, what you don’t want to be married knowing what you know that is ok we are not saying you should not divorce him but we have hope him and for your marriage, are you willing to take him back knowing what you know “No” ok you should probably separate you accounts but you need to know We have hope him and for your marriage, You say your done that is not ok we have hope for him and your marriage, Your daughter is sick it’s ok we have hope for her and him and your marriage, your husband has shown no remorse and is being disrespectful that’s ok we still have hope for him and your marriage. Your husband pinned you to the wall in the hospital because you can’t communicate without it escalating, we don’t do mediation that’s because we can only focus on having hope for him and for your marriage, what after he pinned you to the wall you slapped him, you being in the hospital for the last month with your sick daughter you are sleep deprived we respect the fact that it is hard for you, that is why our support for you is to pray for her and to tell you we have hope for him and for your marriage, oh and by the way we are calling him back into fellowship seeing you wont be here because of your sick daughter, as it is easier for us to work with him here than having him else where because we only put him out for your benefit, so we are calling him back because we have hope for him and your marriage, your husband has still not shown you any remorse for his action but he has shown it to us so we have continued hope for him and for your marriage, he is not paying anything towards your mortgage or the house hold bills, thats ok we have hope we have seen worse things happen in a marriage and they have been fully restored, the real issue is you just want a divorce because you don’t WANT to be married anymore and wether this ends in divorce or not we cannot say but you need to know we have hope for him and for your marriage.

    gee thanks

    • I finally get it. It’s a church based on co-dependency. They love his POTENTIAL to be a decent person. They are angry at you because you won’t play the codependent game with them. It reminds me of what I learned about family systems reading John Bradshaw’s stuff years ago. An unhealthy system (family, church, work place, social group) is built on a tenuous balance of unhealthy roles in order to perpetuate everyone’s dysfunction. That’s why when alcoholics go into recovery or obese people lose weight or a depressed person starts coming back to life, the spouse, children, friends, parents, etc. will often try to undermine the recovery. It has nothing to do with real hope, which would involve letting everyone let go of the dysfunction and learn new patterns. That’s a sick bunch of people trying to control you.

      • It seems as if church communities are getting it wrong on infidelity more often than not.

        • Maybe because most if not all churches are a) openly or covertly misognynistic and patriarchal and/or b) so taken with the idea of sins being forgiven that they don’t pay attention to the parts of the New Testament where Jesus tells forgiven sinners to actually repent. Just a thought.

        • Yup – my stbx Sinister Minister Husband and his MOW Minister AP of 4 years were barely given a slap on the wrist. Congregations forgave immediately and everyone around them supported and forgave. ( so why couldn’t her husband or I just get over it? )
          The church is moving at their own pace, which is about 200 years behind.
          In my experience they just want to put a care bear band aid on it and give you a lolly and tell you it’s just FINE . So sto crying and let’s get back to knitting little hats for kittens in Tibet or whatever the ACW is doing this month !

          • “let’s get back to knitting little hats for kittens in Tibet ”

            Bwahaha! If I had any doubts that you are familiar with mainstream Canadian Protestantism, I no longer do.

  • Problem: Recovering from an affair is hard work.

    Adult Solution: Acknowledge the severity of what you’ve done and that you’re not entitled to reconciliation. Acknowledge the affair was NOT your spouses fault. Act sorry, be transparent, be honest, realize it will take time for your spouse to recover from your selfish asinine actions (this will obviously include lack of intimacy). Don’t remain in contact the OW. Be patient and understanding of this for as long as it takes. As. Long. As. It. Takes.

    Cheater Solution: Beg your spouse to forgive you and make LOTS of promises. After they commit to reconcile, breathe a big sigh of relief. After about a week of “good” behavior, get bored. Contact the OW for more ego kibbles. Have several more affairs with other AP’s because your BS is just being a real downer, and you’re entitled to feel good no matter what. If your spouse finds out about subsequent affairs, deny, gaslight, and if that doesn’t work, blame BS for the affairs (lack of sex, etc). If that doesn’t work, the 3M’s: minimize, manipulate, and mope around until BS feels sorry for you again.

  • (Alleged) Problem? Feeling that the “magic” has gone from relationship and that partner does not “validate” me enough or appreciate me.

    Adult solution? Talk to partner about concerns. Understand that relationships change over time and real life may not always be that “magical” for either partner. Agree to go to counseling with partner. Accept that relationships require work and that “magic” is not something that simply drops from the sky into your lap. Address self esteem issues and the need to gain validation from others . Realise that what you mean by “validation” is in fact hero-worship. Realize that you are not contributing any of the things that you are demanding for yourself from the relationship. Work on that.

    Cheater solution? Start cheating within first year of 7 year relationship. Enrol on casual sex hook-up site. Swap genital photographs with complete strangers, ensuring you disclose enough personal info to be clearly identifiable. Agree to going to counseling but insist that you go alone, then lie about attending. Have random sex with multiple one-night stands. Friend them on Facebook so they can see holiday/engagement/ photos of you with your partner. Have sex with prostitute at home whilst girlfriend visits family. THEN propose to girlfriend a few months later. Continue cheating, spending money on premium sex hook-up sites and a sports car for yourself whilst fiancé saves for a home. Shortly after home is purchased convince fiancé to emigrate to other side of world. When fiancé falls ill on flight whilst emigrating and is taken for treatment and put on oxygen, do not pause in-flight entertainment or get out of seat. Continue to cheat on other side of world. When double life exposed by discovered receipt for sex toy bought for “online friend”, confess all but make sure fiancé realizes it is all her fault for driving you to do this by not appreciating you enough. After fiancée drops a stone in 2 weeks from vomiting, suffers repeated panic attacks and narrowly avoids a total breakdown whilst separating, send numerous emails detailing how hard life is for you and how you don’t like to be alone. Tell everyone how awful fiancée was to you and how unhappy she made you. After receiving no response start dating a stripper you met at a strip-club.

    Fuck…. I’ve never seen it all in type before… You couldn’t make this shit up. So many times I have questioned whether it was my fault or if I should have done more. Great idea for a post ChumpLady, I needed this wake-up call.

    • Forgot part of cheater solution – After cheating discovered, provide email password to partner… But only after deleting any incriminating emails. Tell partner you have done this and then get upset when she tells you this is not helping with transparency.

      • Chumpnomore, repeat after me “it is not my fault” , It is not my fault, ” it is not my fault” when those thoughts start to creep in repeat the above.

        I takes two to make a relationship work but it only takes one to blow it hell.

      • Your “problem” and “adult solution” could have been written by me – it hit me hard when you wrote that all he was demanding for himself he wasn’t giving to the relationship. Because he was giving it to his redneck lackey. And blaming me that the marriage wasn’t working. He STILL claims that he was genuinely committed to saving the marriage in spite of lying about having a side of ho. In spite of having a ho. Seriously he doesn’t see that having a girlfriend affected his commitment to our relationship. <>

      • “Realize that what you mean by “validation” is in fact hero-worship”. Oh Chumpnomore, how true that is, how very true, I laughed at that well turned sentence.

    • Reyn, Just read your blog. I am so sorry. My heart goes out to you. I know how the first few moment and hours of finding out feels.

      • Me, too. You are such a good writer. It’s hard enough when someone you love–who has been telling you that he or she loves you back–seems to change overnight. I’ve been through that same thing. The confusion, the heart break, the sense that you missed some important signal or event that would explain the sudden change. But then you see something in print that lifts the veil. I remember vividly the shock of seeing that the cheater had a Facebook page. Then, when I clicked on it–only one “friend,” and the date tied back to when he really started to treat me badly. To see the evidence of an affair shifts your world. It takes a while to see that moment as the blessing it is, because it is much better to know what is going on, even if it breaks your heart. Thanks for posting the link to the blog. Keep posting links here to update us. I can’t seem to make the reply on the blog work, or I would have left a note there!

  • PROBLEM: I really want a pair of $500 sunglasses for Valentine’s Day, but I don’t want to pay with them with my own hard-earned money, and my boyfriend can’t buy them for me without arousing suspicion from his wife. I could ask my husband for them, but that seems slimy, especially since I’m planning on sleeping with my boyfriend on Feb. 14th (his anniversary — see how much he loves me?).

    ADULT SOLUTION: Forget about the sunglasses. Also, separate from husband and stop sleeping with boyfriend until he’s actually available,

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Joking! There’s no problem here.

  • PROBLEM: Whenever my children wake at night, they call out “Mom!” I don’t like to get up at night to see what their problem is.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Take turns with husband. Getting up at night sucks but there it is — we both wanted children.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Let my husband do it. Every time. Get resentful when the kids start to call out “Dad!” at night.

  • PROBLEM: I am depressed and unhappy. I get depressed and unhappy pretty much every year around the same time. I cannot pull myself out of this state.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Share with wife concerns regarding depression and unhappiness, as she has mentioned several times how I seem to cycle in and out of these episodes, particuarly during certain time periods. Seek counseling and perhaps medication to address problem, with full support and assistance of wife and children.

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Increase time spent on internet viewing porn. Isolate myself from wife and blame her for isolating herself from me. When woman who wanted to date me when I was 20 calls and puts out feelers to see if I will fuck her and leave my family for her, I happily agree. Blame wife and marriage for depression and unhappiness and ask for divorce. Make no move to leave marital home, while publicly dating and fucking pathetic ho-bag. Go to MC at wife’s insistence, where I blame wife and children for all of the marriage problems, gain the sympathy of the counselor, who also gives wife the lion’s share of the blame, and agree to reconcile while laying out list of conditions to now guilty-feeling wife, which amounts to marriage which was mostly about me now being all about me.

  • PROBLEM: Wife not interested in sex after colicky 2nd child.
    ADULT SOLUTION: Help wife get some rest.
    CHEATER SOLUTION: Go fuck as many women for as long as I can and hope I don’t ever get caught.

    REALITY: After cheating for over 12 years with numerous women, one not so happy OW, finally decides to blackmail the Cheating asshole. After over $5000.00 to keep her quite and months of anguish of not being in control, he comes up with an elaborate story of a one night drunken mistake. His story was right out of a Hollywood movie.

  • When you see our situations summed up so succinctly it’s amazing how similar they are, whether our cheater is male or female. They aren’t able to handle responsibilities. They can’t seem to think long term. They are selfish and don’t handle criticism. I’d say they’re like children, but that would give children a bad name.

    I’m even more convinced now that my cheater was the wrong man for me, and I should have seen it a mile away. Fucking hindsight.

      • They don’t see long term. Holy shit. A year after putting his all into his new employee relationship, h had to divulge the affair to his family (their business), our friends, fire the ow, tell our teens who then called him a f —- p—-. All for getting his ego boosted for a few months. He never saw past the end of his dick, didn’t want to stay with her, and has altered so many lives. Lost the respect of his children. Destroyed his marriage. Now he’s sorry. Honestly he thought this was the worlds only extra marital affair that would result in no aftershocks, repercussions or collateral damage. Because 2 lying cheaters always make the best decisions.

        • People who are at the mercy of their ego and/or their genitals now seem sort of ridiculous to me. For the first time in my life I feel it’s not a dirty word to act grown up, in fact I sort of like it.

      • THIS! Porn addiction is the gateway to eventually acting out impulses in the flesh. There are a multitude of free porn sites who have free hook-up sites advertising on them. Just what a married man & father should be spending his time doing, right?

        Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

      • I believe porn was the beginning of the end for our marriage – oh yeah – and the fact that he ‘s a narc.

    • “They aren’t able to handle responsibilities.”

      THIS.

      A sense of unearned entitlement and avoidance behavior… over and over and over in these posts.

      Particularly avoidance of responsibilities that require effective conflict resolution skills, introspection and insight. Too much like work. Work doesn’t always “feel” good while one is doing it. So why do it if I can run away to Fantasy Land and someone will enable me to do so?

      (sarcasm) Real intimacy is always “easy-peasy” … especially love. Love is some mythical, magical, mystical entity that just drops on one from the nether regions of the Cosmos. It will take care of itself on auto pilot! If it requires intentionality and commitment, it can’t be “true love.”

      ***
      The character problem? Basic lack of a comprehensive work ethic and the sense of responsibility that it instills.

      My parents have been married for 72 years. Nothing about being married that long has been easy, but they wouldn’t change a thing. They were children of the Great Depression. Any shred of entitlement was ground out of them by these experiences. They know what real deprivation and hardship are. They clearly understand what working one’s butt off just to survive is. They have a total understanding of the concept of responsibility for the behavior of self and responsibility for the lives of those dependent upon them. They are grateful for everything good in their lives, no matter how trivial it may seem to others. . They are CONTENT people.

      • And they taught me:

        The Universe doesn’t OWE you a damned thing! DO you want to meet the one and only person who can change your life for the better? THEN LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

        • “DO you want to meet the one and only person who can change your life for the better? THEN LOOK IN THE MIRROR.”

          Wow, that’s great way to look at it.

          My ex was actually a very hard worker. In fact, he was a workaholic. He was helpful around the house and pitched in with a lot of the house work, at least when he was home. He did have the “you’re not the boss of me” attitude, though. He was rebellious as a teen and in some ways probably liked that I was responsible. I’d grown up as the oldest in a family with a really sick mom and a younger sibling with special needs. If someone needed to buckle down and take care of things, I was willing to do that. One thing I do know, though, is he thought relationships shouldn’t require any effort. He was also emotionally repressed from living with a very strict father and a family that didn’t acknowledge emotions. In his family “everything was always fine.”

          The biggest issue I see that my ex shared with a lot of cheaters here is an inability to look into himself, or to try to talk about his feelings. It was easier to run away, either by getting involved with coworkers or working 60 hours a week. It was like my job was to either conform to everything he liked and wanted, or leave. In fact, I think that was his strategy. He neglected our marriage for years hoping I’d eventually give up and set him free. But chumpy me was so addicted to Hopium I couldn’t let go. I was addicted to his potential, his confidence, his sparkles. I valued the feelings I had towards him more than the feelings I had for myself.

          • “I valued the feelings I had towards him more than the feelings I had for myself.”

            Yep, that sounds familiar.

          • All I can say is, Lyn, that emotional reciprocity requires being perceptive and having intentionality about keeping a relationships honest and flexible. This is a form of “work” too. But if an individual is so busy being “busy at being nice,” it sometimes creates a kind pseudo-intimacy that can fool people into believing they have the real thing. As someone phrased it on here somewhere, “Being nice is not the same thing as being kind.” (or truly thoughtful) Does that make sense?

      • I agree with everything you wrote, especially this, “The character problem? Basic lack of a comprehensive work ethic and the sense of responsibility that it instills.”

        This issue of work ethics being polar opposites (I have one, he did not) is right at the core of why I should have known this was a bad match in the first place.

        Follow your gut!

  • I apologize for posting twice-as a newcomer to this fabulous website, I’m still working through periodic feelings of rage and hurt in an effort to get to the “meh” stage. My douchebag ex used an exit affair to end our 6 year relationship, officially over April 20. So here goes my round two of this wonderful exercise:

    PROBLEM: I have erectile dysfunction and my girlfriend is always asking for sex, trying to seduce me, being patient, encouraging me to see a doctor in a non-nagging, non-judgmental, loving way
    ADULT SOLUTION: See a doctor/therapist and figure out what is going on.
    CHEATER SOLUTION: Get sloppy drunk and meet divorced woman with low self esteem and boundary issues who totally wants to get in my pants, finds phrases like “I hate my mother” a turn-on and isn’t concerned about flirting and bonding over her “fucked up” life in front of her 9 year old son sitting next to her, bored off his rocker at an adult party. Immediately decide that girlfriend is to blame for erectile dysfunction, and the answer to this problem is to take some horny goat weed pills and have an emotional/physical affair with this skanky, angry looking woman. Leave girlfriend for skank. Ah! these erectile dysfunction problems won’t catch up to me ever again………

  • Love this!
    Problem: “There are too many bitches in this big world to screw, so I am going to have unprotected sex with as many hookers as I can in as many countries as I can. I travel to all corners of the earth and I just work so hard that I deserve to devour as many women [children] as I can expense on my company account. [ick] And now that I’ve developed ED because I only get-off on high risk sex, I can blame my wife for her sexual incompetence.
    Adult solution: Understand that high risk sex is not healthy for the entire family and deal with issues of entitlement, perhaps sex addiction, and over-drinking.
    Cheater solution: “Since my wife is incompetent in every area of her life, I am going to find a replacement for her [secretary], and expense as many 3rd world prostitutes as possible. When the secretary dumps me [she did], I will show up on dating sites as a real great catch — honest, loyal, and exciting. Now that I’ve screwed my X out of child support and alimony, I can manipulate my teens with gifts of money and expensive things, AND see my X struggle to obtain basics.

    • ChattyCat-wow…just wow. Stbx would have done more mongering of foreign prostitutes if I would have let him travel but he screwed up on his 1st international trip away from me & I told him if he went on another trip he would find all his belongings outside and me gone. Of course I’m not the boss of him and he just found a way to do international hooker mongering locally-who knew? He feels entitled to sex with any and all women he feels like because he thinks he is so hot and I ceased to be the trophy wife. The ED for stbx is not only from the high-risk sex, its also the EXCESSIVE porn viewing.

      I am trying to get a job ASAP so I can leave & divorce stbx but I know that when my son is older he will be doing the same material bullshit and sparkly show and it sucks.

      Stbx thinks that because he drives an S class Mercedes and wears a diamond presidential Rolex that he is a catch……but he has to pay for the pussy

  • Problem: Life is hard sometimes. Combining households after marriage, my demanding job and the accelerated MBA program I enrolled in right after we got married is really stressing me out, and it’s not turning out to be the fairy tale honeymoon I had fantasized about. Also because I’m a raging narcissist I insist on working out at least 6-10 hours a week and have hired 2 different personal trainers, since my body and looks get me lots of attention, and I’ve traded my eating disorder for exercise (I won’t admit this to anyone though). Despite the fact that my husband enables me by doing all the grown up stuff like the cooking, cleaning, shopping, pet care, home/yard maintenance and finances (SUCKER!) in addition to trying to regulate my fragile emotions and delusions of grandeur, I’m not content. I need more attention, and I want it from my husband whenever I want it, at my convenience, since I’m SOOOO busy and important – his wants are of no concern to me and should be available at the drop of a hat. Plus I kind of resent him for being the adult in the relationship. I liked that before, but now I want to be a teenager again and he’s a real drag. YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME! He has all these lofty expectations that I should want to be an active participant in our marriage, share responsibilities and reciprocate with my time, affection, and intimacy.

    Adult Solution: Take a deep breath. Prioritize your life. Talk to a therapist. Give your husband a chance to help get through this together. Bumps in the road are to be expected in a new marriage, it’s not all sunshine and lollipops. Act like an adult. Be honest for a change – especially with yourself.

    Cheater Solution: Completely disengage from the marriage within the first 8 to 10 months. Make new friends of dubious character who are even more narcissistic and materialistic than I am, and will completely enable any poor behavior I decide to engage in. Any time that I’m not at work, school, or the gym, I will hang out with them instead of making time for the little annoyances of life like my responsibilities or my husband. Start giving my number out to random guys in bars when I’m “out with the girls” to validate how “hot” I am. Use social media to inflate my ego. Text-flirt relentlessly with my personal trainers. Run up the credit cards that are in husband’s name only (since my credit is awful and I have no self control) on “retail therapy” and other luxuries for myself that I know we can’t afford. Carry on at least one EA (PA?) for 5 months before my husband finally figures it out. Continue my extra-marital relationship despite his pleas and telling my husband otherwise. Move out to “get some space to figure things out”. Pick up an STD in about 3 weeks and then gaslight husband about it, including blaming him for giving it to me (he didn’t). Reach out to husband for false reconciliation attempt for some extra kibbles via the pick me dance, all the while a mutual “friend” has introduced me to husband’s very wealthy and married boss. Now that I’ve found a suitable replacement chump, decide marriage is over and serve husband with divorce papers, which he agreed to out of complete frustration. Secretly carry on this relationship with his boss for months until his wife figures it out. Blame husband for having a thermonuclear meltdown and not wanting to be best buddies after learning the truth. Keep fishing for attention from now ex-husband until he finally grows a pair and tells me exactly what he thinks of me (meanie!) and to stay the hell out of his life. As retaliation for his defiance of my awesomeness as well as not going along with my narrative of why our marriage ended, completely disregard payment of the financial settlement I agreed to. Live happily ever after in the manner and lifestyle I’m ENTITLED to with his boss, at least until I get bored or someone better comes along.

    • UGH Scotty! So sorry you had to go through all that. Happy that guys share their stories on here too.

    • this is a late response, and the first time i’ve ever posted here, but this story almost exactly echoes my own.

      take care, dude. hope things are starting to look up a little.

  • Problem: I’m a middle aged man with self-esteem & mommy issues who needed a cover for my porn & prostitute addictions. My 1st wife had dumped me in less than a year. I found another beautiful, smart lady with a great career to marry me. I love bombed her & acted like her knight in shining armor for about a year after. That was enough time to sink my hooks in right? I went back to my old ways and began distancing from said wife in all ways possible and gas lighted, blame shifted, lied, etc when wife tried to question/fix/confront the situation. I claim to love my wife and son but only when I can take them out for a few, short public appearances to make myself look good. other thn that, i do not want to be with them or around them. I only care about what I have, what I look like, and how great other people think i am-especially really young asian escort girls.
    Solution: Come clean to wife & family; get divorced and get help so that you can be a good, positive role/model for young son.
    Cheater Solution: Tan, take steroids & work out to look like middle aged jersey shore dude, Get secret second phone, get secret phone apps, watch porn morning, noon, and night, Frequent visits to asian massage parlors that offer full service, hook up with craigslist, fuckbook, my horny wife women, etc. Deny everything when caught, refuse to leave when wife can’t, offer half-ass reconciliation and still keep doing everything listed previously because im so sparkly and great.

      • OMG-ChattyCat….I am so sorry that you are experiencing the same thing! Hopefully you have seen an atty and are plotting your escape-I sure am. It just sucks to be stuck in the house with him in the interim period….He really disgusts me but he thinks he is so awesome. I just want to bleach everything he touches-even my poor kid!

  • PROBLEM: My life is a little too boring. I’ve had the same job for a couple years, and I have been with my wife for about 2 or so more years than the longest I had ever been with a girlfriend before my wife. I’m unhappy. I realized I was unhappy after I started spending a lot of time with a woman I got to know while on a short work trip abroad. She is fabulous. Perfect, really. When we are physically close, I feel a spark. It’s electric! She made the boredom with my wife become clear. I don’t want to settle for a boring life. Things are too calm with my wife.

    ADULT SOLUTION: Immediately talk with my wife and come up with a game plan to spice things up in healthy ways, within the marriage and just in general in my life. Take responsibility and work to try new hobbies or activities. Maybe take a trip with my wife?

    CHEATER SOLUTION: Pursue the relationship with the spark because it can’t be denied. I mean, I have no other choice. I didn’t want for this to happen. I will go home and immediately leave my wife for the spark. Well, you know, after I do my laundry. I will jump headfirst into a relationship with this emotionally unpredictable (how interesting!), dramatic, sparkly new girlfriend. How interesting this lack of calmness is!

  • PROBLEM:
    Husband & wife become more & more distant,
    due to:
    1. a child centered marriage
    2. wife having several pregnancies close together late in life, breastfeeding all babies for extended period of time, & then going right into menopause ; wife also has irreparable
    pelvic organ prolapse; husband’s sex drive has not changed since he was a teenager
    3. husband occupied 24/7 with a sports addiction
    4. husband allows his narcissistic mother to bully/criticize/use his wife, & control the marriage
    5. both husband & wife work at stressful jobs outside of the home
    6.. both husband & wife have poor communication skills

    ADULT SOLUTION:
    Husband & wife go to marriage counseling, learn better communication skills, schedule time alone together, establish firm boundaries with MIL

    CHEATER SOLUTION:
    Husband fucks a coworker slut

  • Problem: Narcissitic Personality Disorder and Alcoholism

    Adult Solution: Therapy, medical treatment, AA, realizing you’re an adult, taking responsibility for your choices

    Cheater Solution: Abandoning your wife and three children under the age of 5, impregnating two women you work with in less than 3 months, convincing everyone in your life that your ex-wife needs to be involuntarily committed to inpatient psychiatric treatment because she pushed away from the shit sandwich buffet.

  • Problem:
    Husband is laid off job and works several other jobs before going back to old job but is now 4.5 hours away from home and wife’s job. Husband commutes on weekends and is tired of the long drive.

    Solution: talk to wife about retiring early, or finding new job or selling home to buy something in between areas.

    Cheaters solution: fuck ho worker and never look back at 25 year family and marriage.

  • Adult cheater solution: Fuck a young thing without your wife knowing and get back to life happily.